November, 1913 


Number 1 13 


THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
RECORD 



Extension Series No. S 

ruR.u-, 

The Initiative and Referendum 


PUBWSHED BY THE UNIVERvSITY 
Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Postoffice a 
Chapel Hill, N. C. 


0 = 


Monograph: 







The University of North Carolina 


MAXIMUM SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE 

A. THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS. 

B. THE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE. 

(1) Chemical Engineering. 

(2) Electrical Engineering. 

(3) Civil and Road Engineering. 

(4) Soil Investigation. 

C. THE GRADUATE SCHOOL. 

D. THE SCHOOL OF LAW. 

E. THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. 

F. THE SCHOOL OF PHARMACY. 

G. THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION. 

H. THE SUMMER SCHOOL. 

I. THE BUREAU OF EXTENSION. 

(1) General Information. 

(2) Instruction by Lectures. 

(3) Correspondence Courses. 

(4) Debate and Declamation. 

(5) County Economic and Social Surveys. 

(6) Municipal and Legislative Reference. 

(7) Teachers’ Bureau, Preparatory Schools, and College 

Entrance Requirements. 


For information regarding the University, address 
THOMAS J. WILSON, JR., Registrar 




It, hi J 


■1/6/Y7 


THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
RECORD 


^VEMBER, 1913 

NUMBER 113 



Faculty Committee on Extension 

Louis R. Wilson E. K. Graham N. W. Walker M. H. Stacy 
A. H. Patterson C. L. Rarer H. W. Chase 
M. C. S. Noble Collier Cobb 


Durham, N. C. 
The Sbbman Printbry 
1913 









The Bureau of Extension of the University 
of North Carolina 


The Bureau of Extension of the University of North Carolina offers 
to the people of the State: 

1. Gene:rai. Information : 

Concerning books, readings, essays, study outlines, and subjects 
of general interest. Literature will be loaned from the Li¬ 
brary upon the payment of transportation charges each 
way. 

II. Instruction by Lectures: 

Lectures of a popular or technical nature and addresses for com¬ 
mencement or other special occasions will be furnished any 
community which will pay the traveling expenses of the 
lecturer. 

III. Correspondence Courses: 

For teachers in Arithmetic, Economics, Education, English, Ger¬ 
man, Latin, North Carolina History, Rural Economics, 
Rural Education, Solid Geometry, and United States His¬ 
tory. 

IV. Guidance in Debate and Deceamation : 

Through the High School Debating Union, special bulletins and 
handbooks, and material loaned from the Library. 

V. County Economic and Social Surveys: 

For use by counties in their effort to improve their economic 
and social condition. 

VI. Municipal and Legislative Reference Aids : 

For use in studying and drafting municipal and State legisla¬ 
tion. 

VH. A Teachers’ Bureau : 

To be used as an aid to communities and schools in securing 
efficient teachers and as a clearing house for information 
concerning secondary schools and college entrance require¬ 
ments. 

For full information, address 

The Bureau of Extension, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 


2 


D. of D. 

fEB 20 I9ir 




The High School Debating Union 


History and Purpose 

The High School Debating Union was organized among the second¬ 
ary and high schools of North Carolina by the Dialectic and Philan¬ 
thropic Literary Societies of the University during the school year, 
1912-1913. It was organized to encourage debating in a definite, syste¬ 
matic way among North Carolina high school students. The query 
last year was Resolved, That the Constitution of North Carolina should 
be so amended as to allow women to vote under the same qualifica¬ 
tions as men. Ninety schools took part in this state-wide debate, and 
the Pleasant Garden High School, of Guilford County, was the winner 
of the Final Contest at Chapel Hill and accordingly was awarded the 
Aycock Memorial Cup. This year the Union has received the addi¬ 
tional support of the Bureau of Extension of the University in order 
to insure its permanence and enlarge its usefulness and scope. 

Query for 1913-1914 

The query that has been selected for the members of the Union this 
year is Resolved, That the Constitution of North Carolina should he so 
amended as to allow the Initiative and Referendum in State-wide Leg¬ 
islation. This query was selected because of the growing importance 
of the initiative and referendum as methods of popular government. It 
is thought that by the discussion of this subject the double purpose of 
debating will be accomplished: the students taking part will be given 
excellent practice in debating and speaking in public, and the knowl¬ 
edge of the workings of the initiative and referendum will be of direct, 
practical value to them and to their community audiences in their every 
day problems of civic life. 

Members of the Union 

Every secondary and high school in North Carolina is invited and 
urged to become a member of the Union and participate in this state¬ 
wide debate. Every school that enters will be grouped with two 
others in a triangle, each school putting out two teams, one on the 
affirmative and the other on the negative. Every school that wins both 
of its debates will be entitled to send both of its teams to Chapel Hill 
to contest for the State Championship and the Aycock Memorial Cup. 
The triangular debates will be held throughout the State during the 
latter part of March, and the Final Contest in Chapel Hill will be held 
early in April. At this time there will come in Chapel Hill the “High 



4 


High School Debating Union 


School Week” of the University, during which, in addition to the Final 
Contest of the Union for the Aycock Cup, there will be held Confer¬ 
ences of high school teachers in the Peabody Education Building, the 
Inter-Scholastic Track Meet, and a Declamation Contest. 

Regulations 

1. The Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Societies of the Uni¬ 
versity of North Carolina will suggest a query, to be discussed on a 
given date by the schools entering the Union, and will furnish from 
the University Library, free of cost, in pamphlet form, such material 
as will enable them to comprehend and discuss intelligently the vari¬ 
ous points covered by the question. 

2. All secondary schools of North Carolina, however supported, of¬ 
fering regularly organized courses of study above the 7th grade, and 
not extending in their scope and content beyond a standard four-year 
high school course as defined by the State Department of Education, 
shall be eligible for membership in the Debating Union. 

3. All schools accepting this offer and thus becoming members of 
the Union shall be arranged into groups of three, for a triangular de¬ 
bate, the status and standards of the schools, their proximity, accessi¬ 
bility, and convenience of location to be considered in forming the 
groups. 

4. Each school of each triangular group shall agree to furnish two 
debating teams of two members each, the one to uphold the affirmative 
side of the query, and the other to defend the negative side. 

5. The members of the debating teams must all be bona fide students 
of the school which- they represent. To be bona fide students, they 
must have been in attendance at least 30 per cent, of the school year 
up to and including the day of the debate, and must have made passing 
grades on a majority of their work. Girls are eligible to participate in 
the debates as well as boys. 

6. The team debating at home shall in each case uphold the affirma¬ 
tive side of the query, and the visiting team shall in each case defend 
the negative side. If desired, upon agreement among the schools in a 
given triangle, the debates may be held in neutral territory. The de¬ 
bate between A and B may be held at C; between A and C at B; and 
between B and C at A. 

7. The schools themselves shall select and agree upon the judges of 
the local contests. 

8. Each speaker shall have twenty minutes at his disposal, not more 
than five of which shall be used in the rejoinder. 

9. Any school which shall win both the affirmative and negative 
sides of the query shall be entitled to send both of its teams to the Uni¬ 
versity, at Chapel Hill, for the State Championship Contest. 


The Initiative and Refeeendum 


10. In the event that one school of a triangle drops out and the 
committee at Chapel Hill is unable to secure a school to take its place, 
then the two schools remaining shall debate one another, each sending 
a team on the negative to the other. If either school wins both of these 
debates, then it shall send its teams to Chapel Hill for the Final. 

11. In the event that two schools of a triangle drop out of the Union 
and the committee is unable to secure schools to take their places, then 
the remaining school shall be declared winner over the others, by their 
default, and shall send its teams to Chapel Hill for the Final. 

12. The school having the strongest team on the affirmative side of 
the query and the school having the strongest team on the negative side 
shall be entitled to contest publicly in the University Chapel for the 
Aycock Memorial Cup. (The strongest team on each side of the query 
is to be determined by means of preliminary contests at Chapel Hill). 

13. The school which shall win the debate, thus finally held, shall 
have its name inscribed on the Memorial Cup, together with the names 
of its two winning representatives. 

14. Any school which shall win out in the Final Contest for two 
years in succession shall have the Cup for its own property. 

15. All high school representatives and principals coming to the 
University for this contest will be met at the station by a committee 
and will be entertained free of cost while in Chapel Hill. 

Enter Your School Now 

The High School Debating Union is essentially an organization for 
the secondary and high schools of the State. That it possesses unlim¬ 
ited possibilities for usefulness to every high school pupil and teacher 
and to every community in the state, goes without saying. Its success, 
however, and its benefits to those concerned, are wholly dependent upon 
the support accorded it by the students and school men of North 
Carolina. In order that its possibilities may be fully realized, see to 
it that your school—the school of which you are principal, or the school 
which you attend, or the school in your community—enrolls immediate¬ 
ly in the Union. 

For further information, address 

E. R. RANKIN, Secretary, 

High Schooi, Debating Union, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 


The Initiative and Referendum 


Query 

Resolved, That the Constitution of North Carolina should be so 
amended as to allow the Initiative and Referendum in state-wide legis¬ 
lation. 

Limitations 

For the sake of uniformity in these debates the following limitations 
are expressly laid down: 

1. A petition signed by eight per cent, of the voters shall be neces¬ 
sary to call into use the initiative in the case of state-wide legislation. 

2. A petition signed by ten per cent, of the voters shall be necessary 
to call into use the referendum for state-wide legislation. 

3. The percentage must be based on the total vote cast in the pre¬ 
ceding election for Governor. The total vote cast in the election for 
Governor of North Carolina in 1912 was 243,530. 

4. The referendum shall not apply to laws necessary for the im¬ 
mediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety. 

5. It is understood that the initiative in these debates shall not apply 
to amendments to the constitution. 

Explanation of Terms 

The Initiative is the right of an individual or a group of voters to 
draw up a completely formulated bill and to require, upon petition of a 
certain per cent, of the voters, that the bill, without amendment, shall 
be submitted to popular vote. 

The Referendum is the right of a fraction of the voters to require 
by petition that a law or ordinance adopted by the legislative body 
shall be submitted to popular vote. 

A petition under the Initiative must contain a copy of the bill which 
the petitioners desire to have passed. When presented to the legisla¬ 
tive body the bill proposed must follow the regular course prescribed 
by law. It must be read, referred to committee, printed and reported 
back for consideration and action. If duly passed and approved it 
becomes a law, as any other bill would. If it is rejected or if it fails 
to receive final action in the legislative body, it must be submitted to 
the people at the next regular election for their consideration and 
action. While the legislative body cannot prevent the submis¬ 
sion of the bill to the people, either by smothering, amending, or de- 



The Initiative and Referendum 


7 


feating it, it can submit a substitute measure to be voted upon at the 
same election. 

A petition under the Referendum must be filed with the proper au¬ 
thority, as the Secretary of State, for instance, within a limited number 
of days after the passage of the bill objected to, during which period 
all bills of the class to which the referendum is applicable must remain 
in suspense; the bill objected to must thereupon be submitted to the 
people at the next election. 

If any bill, or amendment, submitted under either of these systems 
receives a majority of the votes cast at the election thereon, it thereup¬ 
on becomes a law; otherwise it fails. The best systems of the initia¬ 
tive and referendum provide that the advocates or opponents of a bill 
submitted may file briefs not exceeding a specified number of words, 
setting forth their reasons for or against it, which, together with the 
bill itself, shall be printed for distribution at public expense. 

History 

Both the Initiative and Referendum as working principles of -gov¬ 
ernment in state-wide legislation and in amendments to the constitu¬ 
tion were first used in the Swiss provinces, where they have had a 
rather long and, to judge from all reports, a very successful operation. 
Since 1874 the Referendum has been a feature of the government of 
the Swiss Confederation, and the Initiative was adopted in 1891. 

In the United States the Referendum is employed in one form or 
another in every state and municipality. The constitutions of the 
states are amended only by the vote of the people of the states. Also, 
locally, the Referendum is used everywhere to determine such questions 
as the incorporation of towns, the incorporation of school districts, the 
issuing of bonds by a community, and to decide such questions as the 
location of state capitals and county seats. 

However, it has not been until comparatively recently that the prin¬ 
ciples of the Initiative and Referendum in state-wide legislation and in 
amendments to the constitution have been recognized by the American 
States. The growth of these methods of popular government in the 
United States is shown by this significant summary: 

PROGRESS OE THE INITIATIVE AND REEERENDUM IN AMERICA 

1898—The electors of South Dakota adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 23,876 to 16,483. 

1900—The electors of Utah adopted initiative and referendum amend¬ 
ment by vote of 19,219 to 7»786. 

igo2 —The electors of Oregon adopted initiative and referendum amend¬ 
ment by vote of 62,024 to 5,668. 


8 


High School Debating Union 


1904—The electors of Nevada adopted referendum amendment by 
vote of 4,393 to 702. 

1904—The electors of Missouri defeated initiative and referendum 
amendment. 

1906—The electors of Oregon adopted supplemental initiative and 
referendum amendment by vote of 46,678 to 16,735. 

1906— The electors of Montana adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 36,374 to 6,616. 

1907— The electors of Oklahoma adopted a state constitution, including 
provisions for the initiative and referendum, by vote of 180,333 
to 73,059- 

1908— The electors of Missouri adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 177,615 to 147,290. 

1908—The electors of Michigan adopted a constitution containing pro¬ 
vision for referendum on laws and initiative on constitutional 
amendments by vote of 244,705 to 130,783. 

1910—The electors of Arkansas adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 91,367 to 39,111. 

1910— The electors of Colorado adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 89,141 to 28,698. 

1911— The electors of California adopted initiative and referendum 
amendment by vote of 168,744 to 52,093. 

1911—The electors of Arizona adopted a constitution containing pro¬ 
vision for the initiative and referendum by vote of 12,187 to 3,822. 

1911— The electors of New Mexico adopted a constitution containing 
provision for the referendum by vote of 31,742 to 13,399. 

1912— The electors of the States of Idaho, Nevada, Ohio, Wyoming, 
Nebraska, and North Dakota adopted initiative and ref¬ 
erendum amendments during this year. 

1912—The electors of Mississippi voted on the initiative and referen¬ 
dum amendment. The result was 25,183 for the amendment 
and 13,383 against it. Under the constitution, however, 
it had to receive a majority of all the votes cast in the 
general election, and the total vote cast by presidential elec¬ 
tors was 64,948. Something like 26,000 voters did not vote either 
for or against it. The legislature of 1914 will probably submit 
the proposition again. 


The Ixitiative and Keferendu^ve 


9 


Till-: Vote on Initiative and Referendum Measures in Oregon 

IN THE Year 1910. 

Total Vote 120,248. 


Woman suffrage amendment*.| 

Act authorizing purchase of site, construc¬ 
tion and maintenance of branch insane 

asylumt . 

Act calling convention to revise state con- 

stitutiont . 

Amendment providing separate election dis¬ 
tricts for members of the General Assem- 

hlyt . 

Amendment permitting classification of prop¬ 
erty foi purposes of taxationt . 

Amendment authorizing establishment of 
railroad districts and purchase and con¬ 
struction of railroads;!; . 

Taxation amendment authorizing uniform 
rule of taxation “except on property not 

specifically taxed,” etcj . 

An act increasing judge’s salary in eighth 

judicial districtt . 

Bill to create Nesmith county* . 

Bill to maintain state normal school at 

Monmouth* . 

Bill to create Otis county* . 

Bill providing for annexation of portion of 
Clackamas county to ^lultnomah county*.. 

Bill to create Williams county* . 

Amendment providing for county regulation 
of county taxation and abolishing poll tax*. 
Amendments providing for city local ojition*. 

Bill to fix liability of employers*. 

Bill to create Orchard county*. 

Bill to create Clark county* . 

Bill providing for pei-manent support, by 
taxation, of Eastern Oregon State normal 

school . 

Bill providing for annexation of portion of 
Washington countj’ to Multnomah county.. 
Bill providing for permanent support, by 
taxation, of Southern Oregon State normal 

school* . 

Amendment prohibiting manufacture and 

sale of intoxicating liquors* . 

Bill to make prohibition amendment effective*. 
Bill creating board of commissioners to ex¬ 
amine and report on employers’ indemnity 

for injuries* . 

Bill prohibiting the taking of fish from Rogue 

river e.xcept by hook and line* . 

Bill to create Deschutes county* . 

Bill to provide for creation of new towns, 
counties, and municipal districts by popu¬ 
lar vote within territory affected* . 

Amendment permitting counties to incur in¬ 
debtedness beyond .$5,000 to build roads*. . 
Bill extending primary law so as to allow 
voters to express their choice for candi¬ 
dates for president and vice-president, 
presidential electors, and delegates to pres¬ 
idential conventions* . . 


>- 

e 

Z 

Majority 

Approving 

Majority 

Rejecting 

O 

>• 

© 

F— 

e 

:{5,270| 

59,065 

. 

23,795 

78 

50,135 

41,504 

8,030 

•. 

76 

23,143 

59,974 


30,831 

69 

24,000 

54,252 


30,252 

65 


40,172 


2,553 

04 


40,070 


13,226 

65 

31,029 

41,092 


10,063 

61 

13,161 

71,503 


58,.342 

70 

22,800 

60,591 


37,725 

69 

50,191 

40,041 

10,147 


75 

17,420 

02,010 


44,.590 

06 

10,250 

09,002 


52,752 

71 

14,508 

04,090 


49,582 

65' 

44,171 

42,127 

2,044 


72 

53,321 

50,779 

2,542 


86 

56,258 

33,943 

22,315 


75 

15,004 

62,712 

47,048 

65 

15,013 

01,704 


40,091 

64 

40,898 

46,201 


5,303 

72 

14 047 

68 221 


54 174 

68 

38,473 

48,655 


10,182 

72 

43,554 

61,221 


17,681 

87 

42,651 

63,564 


20,913 

87 

32,224 

51,719 


19,495 

69 

49,712 

.33,.397 

16,315 

69 

17,592 

00,486 


42,894 

65 

37,129 

42,327 


5,198 

66 

51,275 

32,906 

18,369 

70 


141,024 

1,729 


7T 


* Submitted under the inintiative. 

t Submitted under the referendum upon legislative act. 
tSubmitted to the people by the legislature. 














































































10 


High School Debating Union 


The Vote on Initiative and Referendum Measures in Oregon 
IN the Year Continued. 


Bill to ci-eate board of inspectors of state 
government and providing for bi-montbly 

reports* . 

Amendm(yit extending initiative, referendum 
and recall powers of the people, etc*.... 
Amendment providing for verdict of three- 
fourths of jury in civil cases and separate 
summons for grand and trial jurors ; au¬ 
thorizing certain changes in judicial sys¬ 
tem and procedure of supreme court; 
fixing terms of supreme court, and official 
tenure of all courts* . 


>- 

as 

Majority 

Approving 

Majority 

Rejecting 

% of TotalVote 

29,955 

52,538 


22,583 

68 

37,031 

44,366 


7,335 

6T 

44,538 

39,399 

5,139 


69 






















Brief 


Initiative and Referendum 

Resolved, That the Constitution of North Carolina should be so 

amended as to allow the Initiative and Referendum in state-wide 

legislation. 

Introduction 

I . Certain evils existing in the various state governments have 
aroused wide-spread discussion as to the possible means of their 
elimination. 

II. Many statesmen and reformers are advocating, as a remedy, the 
adoption of the Initiative and Referendum. 

III. The fundamental idea behind the Initiative is that the voters in 
the state may at their own option suggest and vote upon given 
measures, irrespective of any action by the state legislature. If a 
majority of those casting ballots vote in favor of the measure, it 
becomes a law. If a majority be against a measure, it does not be¬ 
come a law. 

IV. The Referendum operates in much the same way. If the legisla¬ 
ture passes a measure which does not meet with popular approval, 
the voters may by means of the Referendum have the question sub¬ 
mitted to a popular vote. The legislature is forced to abide by the 
decision of the voters as expressed at the election. 

V. The Initiative and Referendum are in use in foreign countries 
and in a number of American states and cities. 

AFFIRMATIVE 

I. The Initiative and Referendum are logical and natural outgrowths 
in the development of American government; for,— 

A. They are in harmony with the development that has preceded 

them. This development has included: 

1. The New England town meeting. 

2. The organization of representative government. 

3. The restrictions that are more and more being placed upon the 
power of the legislature, such as, 

a. Governors were formerly selected by the legislature. Now 
they are elected by a direct vote of the people. 

b. Presidential electors were formerly selected by the legisla¬ 
tures. Now they are chosen by direct vote of the people. 



12 


High School Debating Union 


c. Members of the judiciary were formerly selected by the leg¬ 
islatures. Now they are chosen by a direct vote of the people. 

d. Constitutional amendments were formerly drafted and passed 
by the legislatures. Now, in nearly all states, they are sub¬ 
mitted to the people for final ratification. 

B. They begin at the points where the previous reform measures 

leave off. 

II. The Initiative and Referendum will secure better government; 

for,— 

A. They will raise the standard of citizenship; for,— 

1. A higher respect for law will be inculcated; for,— 

a. The voters, themselves, will be the lawmakers. They will 
respect their own laws. 

2. The measures will have profound educational effect; for,— 

a. The voters will be instructed concerning the issues before 
them. 

b. Actual participation in the voting will be educational in itself. 

B. They will put legislation on a business-like basis; for,— 

I. There will be a complete separation of political issues from the 

personality of canjdidates for office. Each will be considered 

upon its own merits. 

C. They will do away with undesirable legislation, either intentional 

or unintentional; for,— 

1. The power of political machines will be broken; for,— 

a. The people will have an opportunity to vote directly upon the 
issues before them. Important questions will not be left to the 
discretion of a few party leaders. 

2. Eobbying will be eliminated from politics; for,— 

a. The voters, themselves, will actually decide the important 
measures. 

b. The knowledge that measures may at any time be put before 
the people for ratification will cause members of the legisla¬ 
ture to vote for each question upon its own merits, rather than 
be influenced by persons who have interests at stake. 

3. The incentive for bribery will be taken away; for,— 

a. With the possibility of the measure being referred to the 
voters,, the legislators can no longer promise to “deliver” the 
votes. 

III. The Initiative and/Referendum are practical; for,— 

A. They require only the ordinary election machinery. 


The Initiative and Referendum 


13 


B. They are exceedingly simple in operation. 

C. They are comparatively inexpensive. 

IV. The Initiative and Referendum have proved uniformly successful; 

for,— 

A. “Boss” rule has been eliminated in South Dakota. 

B. Granting of special privileges has been prevented in Oklahoma. 

C. Corporate domination has been done away with in Oregon. 

D. Switzerland has been signally successful in using the measures. 

V. North Carolina needs the Initiative and Referendum; for,— 

A. Many sorely needed state-wide laws have failed of enactment 
whose passage would be hastened by the adoption of this amend¬ 
ment; for,— 

1. North Carolina needs a direct primary for the election of 
all officers. 

2. North Carolina needs a corrupt practices act. 

3. North Carolina needs further protection for women and chil¬ 
dren engaged in work in mills and other establishments. 

B. The passage of this amendment would have a salutary effect 
in that the Legislature would then be compelled to listen closely to 
the people in the making of laws; for,— 

I. The Initiative and Referendum would give the people the power 
of enacting desired laws which the Legislature refused to enact, 
and the knowledge of this fact would make legislators more 
responsive to the people’s will. 

NEGATIVE 

I. The Initiative and Referendum are contrary to the fundamental 

principles of American government; for,— 

A. They strike at the very root of representative government; for,— 

1. They weaken the power of the legislature; for,— 
a. They take from it final authority. 

2. They take away the responsibility of the members of the legis¬ 
lature. 

3. The measures are based on the assumption that the members of 
the legislatures are either corrupt or ignorant. 

4. The measures assume that the mass of the people are more 
intelligent and wiser than the persons whom they choose to rep¬ 
resent them. 

B. They encourage hasty and unwise action; for,— 

I. They are based upon the idea that the popular demand is always 
the course that should be followed. 


14 


High School Debating Union 


II. The argument that the Initiative and Referendum will secure 
better government is not valid; for,— 

A. It is a very simple matter to secure fraudulent signatures on 
Initiative and Referendum petitions; for,— 

1. Petitions are circulated at stations, warehouses and other pub¬ 
lic places. 

2. Petitions are often left lying around in stores for days at a 
time. 

B. The Initiative and Referendum give a hasty and immature tone 
to legislation; for,— 

I. They are almost always used in times of public excitement. 

III. The Initiative and Referendum are impractical in actual opera¬ 
tion; for,— 

A. Voters have failed to show any permanent increased interest in 
public affairs ; for,— 

I. As soon as the novelty of the plan has worn away they have 
neglected to come to the polls to vote. 

B. Voters have been very superficial in their investigations of pend¬ 
ing problems; for,— 

I. They have evidenced neither interest nor care in voting upon 
measures. 

C. Voters have used the measures only spasmodically, and have 
thus kept legislatures in continual doubt as to what course to 
pursue. 

D. Special interests have found it comparatively easy to circularize 
the state and secure the passage of measures particularly favorable 
to them. 

IV. Present conditions do not warrant the adoption of such measures 
as the Initiative and Referendum; for,— 

A. State governments are comparatively free from abuses; for,— 

1. With but few exceptions legislators try honestly to represent 
their constituents. 

2. The legislators are men of unusual ability and intelligence. 

B. In those instances where unworthy or inefficient legislators are in 
power, the evil can be remedied by the voters coming to the polls 
and electing good men to office. The responsibility rests entirely 
with the people even at the present time. 

V. North Carolina does not need the Initiative and Referendum; 
for,— 


The Initiative and Refeeendum 


15 


A. If there were a vital need, as the affirmative contends, for the 
state-wide laws they propose, it would long ago have asserted itself 
under our system; for,— 

I. Our presnt system of representative government is in accord 
with the principles underlying a republican form of government, 
and is responsive to popular needs. 

B. The working of the Initiative and Referendum in other states is 
not of such a nature as to justify their extension to North Caro¬ 
lina; for,— 

1. There is much dissatisfaction with their working in Oregon 
and other States. 

2. North Carolina is a conservative State and does not want the 
Initiative and Referendum until they have proven entirely suc¬ 
cessful. 

3. At best, they are yet but political experiments. 


References—Affi rmative 


FUNCTIONS OF THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

(By Jonathan Bourne, Jr., United States Senator from Oregon, in Annals 
of American Academi/, September, 1912.) 

Briefly summarized, the functions of the initiative and referendum 
are: 

To restore the sovereignty of the people. 

To educate and develop the people. 

To secure legislation for the general welfare. 

To prevent legislation against the general welfare. 

To eliminate the legislative blackmailer. 

To make our legislative bodies truly representative. 

I will discuss each of these in the order mentioned. 

The chief function of the initiative and referendum is to restore the 
absolute sovereignty of the people—to make this in fact as well as in 
name, a government of, for, and by the people. The word ‘‘sovereign¬ 
ty” conveys the idea of supreme rulership and we have taken pride in 
flattering ourselves that the American people enjoy the power of self- 
government. And so they do, in theory, but I shall undertake to demon¬ 
strate that they do not in practice, except in the few rare instances 
when, after suffering a long series of abuses, they arise, assert their 
rights, and temporarily overthrow their political dictators. 

The citizenship of every state have seen legislature after legislature 
enact laws for the special advantage of a few and refuse to enact laws 
for the welfare of the many. Under the convention system of nomina¬ 
tions, which has been universal until the last few years, slates of dele¬ 
gates were selected by men who commercialized politics, and the 
great masses of the people, unacquainted with political manipulation or 
too honest to resort to it, had no recourse but to ratify the slate. These 
specially selected delegates nominated candidates for legislative, judicial 
and executive offices in accordance with the desire of the boss. The 
same methods having been pursued in each political party, the voter was 
given a choice between two sets of candidates each under obligation to, 
and, therefore, responsible to, the manager of the party machine. Un¬ 
der this system, cities, counties, and states have long been ruled; and 
the people deluded themselves with the pleasing assumption that this 
was “self-government.” 

Nay, more. This rulership by self-constituted dictators extended to 
national affairs, and through the misuse of federal patronage, aided by 
excessive representation in some of the states, control of national con- 



The Initiative and REFEEENDUiVt 


17 


ventions has been secured and the will of the people has been ignored. 
Such rulership will exist in any state not having a direct primary 
guarded by an efficient corrupt practices act, and it will continue to 
exist in national affairs until, through the general adoption of a presi¬ 
dential primary, the people obtain the power to select the party candi¬ 
dates free from the dictation of managers of federal machines. Our 
boasted “sovereignty of the people” has been a myth, a delusion, and a 
snare—an empty phrase serving chiefly to delay the ultimate assertion 
of the rights of citizenship. 

Realizing that legislatures were habitually misrepresentative and that 
public servants were selected by private interests has finally inspired 
the people of this country with new hopes, has aroused them to higher 
ideals and brought them a “new birth of freedom,” so that today the 
fight for the new independence is waged in every state and in the nation 
at large. 

INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM FOUNDATION OF POPUEAR GOVERNMENT 

It is the battle for popular government, at the foundation of which 
lies the initiative and referendum—the power of the people to make 
laws. Once this power is secured the other popular government features 
will be added, until conventions, the ready instrumentality of the po¬ 
litical dictator, will be abolished and the direct primary, corrupt prac¬ 
tices act, and recall will be established. Then we may speak truly of the 
“sovereignty of the people,” for then will exist in their power, to make 
or unmake laws, to select candidates, and elect public servants; to dis¬ 
miss from service any elected officer who proves unfaithful, incompe¬ 
tent, or otherwise unsatisfactory. Nothing short of this can fulfill the 
idea of supreme rulership, which the word “sovereign” conveys. 

But let us not be deceived as to the extent and manner of the exer¬ 
cise of this power. It is not proposed that the people shall act directly 
in all the intricate details of legislation or that legislatures shall be 
abolished or made needless. Such has not been the experience in my 
own state, Oregon, where the initiative and referendum have been most 
employed. At the last general election the people of Oregon voted upon 
thirty-two measures, the largest number ever submitted at one election. 
Of these measures, eleven were constitutional amendments, of which 
four were adopted and seven rejected. Of the twenty-one bills sub¬ 
mitted, only five were enacted and sixteen rejected. The result of the 
direct vote was nine measures adopted. The Oregon Legislature held a 
forty-day session last January, considered seven hundred and twenty- 
five bills and two hundred and thirty-five resolutions and memorials. 
Two hundred and seventy-five of the bills were enacted. Therefore, 
the extent of substitution of direct legislation is indicated by the ratio 
of nine to two hundred and seventy-five. This is not exactly “abandon¬ 
ment” of the representative system. Yet Oregon enjoys popular gov- 


18 


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ernment and the people are sovereign, for they had the power under the 
referendum to defeat almost any one of those two hundred and seven¬ 
ty-five legislative acts. They have the power to enact any measure 
the legislature failed to pass. 

It is a very general opinion that the American people are afflicted 
with too much legislation, but, if this be true, the fault lies not with 
the initiative, as I have just shown. Neither can the initiative be 
charged with whatever evils may have arisen from hasty or ill-consid¬ 
ered laws. The fact is that laws enacted by the people are more care¬ 
fully prepared, more widely discussed, and more thoroughly considered 
than are the acts of a legislature. A bill or proposed constitutional 
amendment submitted under the initiative must be filed with the secre¬ 
tary of state not less than four months before the election. Prior to 
that time the measure secures publicity through the fact that it must be 
circulated for the signatures of eight per cent, of the voters. After the 
bills have been filed the promoters and opponents thereof may file 
arguments for and against. It is made the duty of the secretary of 
state to have a full copy of the title and text of each measure, to¬ 
gether with the arguments for and against, printed in a pamphlet, a 
copy of which must be mailed to every registered voter not less than 
fifty-five days prior to the election. The title of a bill appears in the 
publicity pamphlet exactly as it will appear upon the ballot. In this 
way the voter secures the best possible information regarding the pro¬ 
visions of the bills, their merits or defects, and the reason why they 
should or should not be enacted. 

No such opportunity for the study of measures is afforded members 
of a legislature. The Oregon Legislature, for instance, is in session 
only forty days and members secure printed copies of the bills intro¬ 
duced no sooner than the end of the first week. Very frequently im¬ 
portant bills are introduced after the middle of the session and the 
members have copies of these before them not more than twenty days. 
Amendments are frequent, and sometimes these are made as late as the 
day on which the bill is passed, so that the legislators frequently vote 
upon bills without knowing their real effect. 

We had a conclusive demonstration of this in the Oregon Legislature 
of 1903, when the legislature repealed a statute which allowed every 
householder a tax exemption of household goods to the value of $300. 
After the legislature adjourned members were astonished to learn that 
they had repealed such a law, and, at a special session, called within a 
year, this statute was re-enacted by an overwhelming vote. Four months 
of public discussion would have disclosed the nature of the bill and 
would have prevented action not intended. 

NO HASTY OR UNWISE ACTION 

In the exercise of this sovereign power there are other circumstances 
that guard against unwise action. One argument often used against 


The Initiative and Referendum 


19 


the initiative is that a measure submitted under it is not susceptible of 
amendment after it has been filed in the office of Secretary of State. 
Instead of being cause for criticism, this is reason for commendation, 
for experience has shown that one of the common methods by which 
vicious legislation is secured is to introduce a harmless or beneficial 
bill and let it secure a favorable report from a legislative committee, 
but with a slight amendment inserted therein which entirely changes 
its character or effect in some important particular, thereby serving 
some selfish interest. When it is known that a bill must be enacted 
or rejected exactly as drawn, the framers of the measure will spend 
weeks and months in studying the subject and drafting the bill in 
order to have it free from unsatisfactory features. 

In actual practice in Oregon almost every proposed bill is submitted 
to a considerable number of men for criticism and suggestions before 
its final form is determined upon. The original draft undergoes many 
amendments, and these are more carefully considered than would be the 
case if the bill were before a legislature. Knowing that the bill will be 
subjected to the closest scrutiny of all the people for four months, the 
framers of the bill desiring its passage naturally endeavor to remove 
every reasonable objection, to make all its provisions perfectly clear, and 
especially to remove every indication of bad faith. A bill to which 
there are many serious objections would stand little chance of adop¬ 
tion by a popular vote. When thus drawn and submitted, a bill is in 
the best possible form, and there is no possibility of its being made the 
instrument for the enactment of what are commonly called “jokers.” 

Bills thus drawn may not be perfect, for no human work is perfect, 
but they will be much better drawn than the great majority of bills 
presented to a legislature; and, if adopted, ’will be an improvement 
upon legislation already in force on the same subjects. The people 
of a state will never vote against their own interests, hence they will 
never vote to adopt a law unless it proposes a change for the improve¬ 
ment of the general welfare. Previous to the last election, each voter 
had fifty-five days in which to consider thirty-two measures, which, 
with arguments for and against, were laid before him in convenient 
printed form. This gave him an average of nearly two days for the 
consideration of each measure. Assuming that many of the bills in¬ 
troduced in one house never appear in the other, each member of the 
Oregon Legislature was called upon to consider about five hundred 
bills in forty days, or over twelve each day, besides being compelled 
to consider many resolutions, motions, and questions of a political char¬ 
acter. In my opinion, the individual voters of the state, in the quiet 
of their own homes in the evening, could better consider and decide 
upon an average of one bill in two days than the members of the legis¬ 
lature, amid the hurry and strife and personal feeling, incident to a 
legislative session, could consider and decide upon an average of 


20 


High School Debating Union 


twelve bills a day. It is erroneous to assume that the voter is required 
to pass upon a large number of measures in the few minutes he occu¬ 
pies the booth on election day. Such is not the case. He has several 
weeks in which to determine how he will vote, and merely takes a few 
minutes in which to mark his ballot. 

TO EDUCATE AND DEVEEOP THE PEOPEE 

I have thus indicated the second function of the initiative and 
referendum—to educate and develop the people. Establishment of di¬ 
rect legislation places upon the people responsibility for all 
legislation, for having power to enact or defeat any law, they must 
be responsible for that which exists. When tlie people fully under¬ 
stand and realize this responsibility, they study their government more 
carefully and take deeper interest in the administration of its affairs. 
Where the initiative and referendum do not exist, people have little 
encouragement to devote time and effort to the study of public ques¬ 
tions, for, even if they desired, they have no power to change laws or 
conditions. Therefore, chief among the advantages of the initiative 
and referendum is the unlimited field afforded for individual and com¬ 
munity development. Direct legislation establishes equal opportunity in 
government, for it places in the hands of every man the same machinery 
for accomplishment that every other man enjoys. It opens the way for 
men of good ideas and enables the whole community to secure the ad¬ 
vantages arising from advanced thought. 

Suppression of the individual is one of the results of delegated gov¬ 
ernment ; development of the individual necessarily follows adoption 
of popular government. Suppression of the individual is seen in every 
convention and every legislative body—city, state and national. 

The great masses of the. people are always more advanced in thought 
and ideals than a majority of men who secure positions of power in 
conventions or legislative halls. This has been demonstrated in num¬ 
erous instances, which will readily suggest themselves to the minds of 
readers of this assertion. For instance, throughout the United States 
there is an overwhelming public opinion, carefully formed, in favor of 
popular election of United States senators. That opinion has existed 
in the minds of the people for a decade or more; yet party conven¬ 
tions have failed to endorse the principle and congress failed until 
recently to submit an amendment to the constitution in accordance with 
the popular will. The people of the country realize that no man can 
be elected United States senator by an uninstructed legislature unless 
he knows the individual members to whom he is primarily obligated for 
his election; and, what is still worse, in many instances, unless he 
knows the political boss, campaign contributor, or special interest dom¬ 
inating a number of legislative members sufficient to prevent his 
election unless there is agreement, express or implied, to favor and 


The Initiative and Refeeendum 


21 


protect with national legislation the dominant interest. The people of 
the country have long desired to destroy this obligation to individuals 
and substitute therefor an obligation to the composite citizen; but a 
majority of members of the senate have only recently advanced to this 
idea of governmental accountability. 

Always there are a few intellectual leaders who are in advance of 
the masses of the people; but the practical workings of delegated gov¬ 
ernment are such that the masses of the people are always in advance 
of those individuals who secure political but not intellectual leadership. 
“Practical politics,” under a s^^stem of delegated government, brings 
into power men who are guided more by selfish interest than by 
general welfare. Popular government reverses this condition and 
gives power to intellectual leaders rather than to men whose success 
is due to skill as “practical politicians.” 

Occasionally there arises a man who is not only an intellectual leader 
but also a practical politician of such ability as to secure adoption of 
his ideas, even under a system of delegated government; but these 
instances are rare. Though working with the old tools of govern¬ 
ment, an intellectual leader in Wisconsin was able to secure practical 
adoption of many of his ideas. Greater and earlier success would have 
attended his efforts if direct legislation had afforded him a means of 
appealing direct to the people of his state. 

THE INSTRUMENT OE INTEEEECTUAE EEADERSHIP 

The power of direct legislation under the initiative and referendum is 
the practical machinery of intellectual leadership. Without that ma¬ 
chinery the intellectual leader is in most cases powerless. How often 
have we seen this illustrated in conventions and legislatures. Oc¬ 
casionally a man with advanced ideas secures a seat in a party con¬ 
vention, though usually men of that kind are not wanted by the 
leaders who make slates of delegates; but when the man of originality 
and progress gets into a convention he finds himself powerless. If he 
wishes his party to incorporate in its platform a plank embodying an 
advanced principle in government, he formulates a resolution for that 
purpose; and, under the rules, that resolution goes to a committee 
without having been read to the convention. The commit¬ 
tee has been carefully selected in advance after consultation among 
men who, because of their skill in “practical politics,” are able to 
manipulate conventions. Members of the committee know the men to 
whom they owe their selection and the interests back of the organiza¬ 
tion. Their action upon the resolution submitted by the progressive 
delegates is, therefore, in accordance with the wishes of the interest 
they represent; and when the party platform is read it contains no 
endorsement of the new idea unless popular demand has forced its 
adoption. A convention is less progressive than the people; hence 


22 


High School Debating Union 


a committee on resolutions is less progressive than a convention; 
hence the strangulation of new ideas in a convention. 

Legislatures that, in theory, represent the people, generally prove to 
be less advanced in thought than the people themselves. Though 
legislators are elected by the people, they are in most states nominated 
by conventions controlled by “practical politicians” backed by campaign 
contributors. Hence members of a legislature feel an obligation to 
certain known individuals and their first act is to co-operate with those 
individuals in the organization of the legislature. This organization 
includes the appointment of standing committees, which appointments 
are usually made after consultation with the same “practical politic¬ 
ians” who controlled the nominating conventions, with the result that 
important committees are so constituted as to make protection of 
special interests certain. Then, when the legislator with advanced 
ideas introduces a bill for promotion of the general welfare as against 
special interest the bill goes to a committee representing special interests 
and there remains until the close of the session; or, if reported at all, 
comes to light too late for action or with amendments that change its 
character. This procedure has been witnessed in every legislature in 
every state. Applying to a legislature the statement in the last preced¬ 
ing paragraph, a legislature is less progressive than the people; a “grave¬ 
yard committee” is less progressive than a legislature; hence the strang¬ 
ulation of new ideas in a legislative body. 

On the other hand, direct legislation encourages individual develop¬ 
ment. Under the initiative any man can secure the submission of his 
ideas to a vote of all the people, provided eight per cent, of the people 
sign a petition asking that the measure he proposes be so submitted. 
There is no opportunity for secret strangulation and all the people have 
the advantage of studying the ideas of the most advanced, and have 
opportunity to adopt those ideas if they deem such action wise. 

PROMOTES THE GENERAE WEEEARE 

This unlimited opportunity for individual accomplishment opens the 
way for legislation for the general welfare, and, as I view it, only legis¬ 
lation for the general welfare can secure popular endorsement. This 
opinion is founded upon an analysis of the forces controlling human ac¬ 
tion. Either impulse or deduction, followed by conviction, controls all 
human action. If the individual be confronted with the necessity for im¬ 
mediate action, then impulse arising from emotion, such as love, 
hatred, anger, sympathy, sentiment, or appetite, is the determining 
force. Without conviction there will be no action. 

Individual action should be guided by reason, but is frequently emo¬ 
tional. Community action, as in an election, must be based upon con¬ 
viction resulting from analysis and deduction. Self-interest is the 
force controlling every future or postponed action of the individual, not 


The Initiative and Referendum 


23 


necessarily always selfish interest, for sometimes the individual is 
satisfied with his participation in the improved general welfare incident 
to the action. Generally, however, the individual’s action, when unre¬ 
strained, is governed by his own selfish and personal interest. 

No two people in the world are exactly alike; consequently each in¬ 
dividual has a different point of view or idea as to what constitutes 
his own particular personal or selfish interest. Where individuals act 
collectively or as a community, as they must under the initiative, ref¬ 
erendum and recall, an infinite number of different forces are set in 
motion, most of them selfish, each struggling for supremacy, but all 
different because of the difference in the personal equations of the 
different individuals constituting the community. Because of their 
difference, friction is created, each different selfish interest attacks the 
others because of its difference. No one selfish interest is powerful 
enough to overcome all others! they must wear each other away until 
general welfare, according to the views of the majority acting, is sub¬ 
stituted for the individual selfish interest. 

If all the individual units of society were alike, then selfishness 
would dominate not only the individual but the community action as 
well. But so long as no two people are alike, just so long will selfish¬ 
ness dominate the individual if permitted to act independently, while 
general welfare must control all community action; for if the individual 
can not secure the gratification of his own selfish desire, then he must 
rest satisfied with the improved general welfare in which he, as one 
of the units of the community, is a proportional participant. 

This logic applies to a community or a class. Under the initiative, 
referendum, and recall there can be no class or community action 
against the general welfare of the citizens constituting the zone of 
action. The individual through realization of the impossibility of se¬ 
curing special legislation for himself and against the general welfare of 
the community, soon ceases his efforts for special privilege and contents 
himself with efforts for improved general welfare. Thus the indi¬ 
vidual, class, and community develop along lines of general welfare 
rather than along lines of selfish interest. 

In further refutation of the unwarranted fear of hasty or unwise 
community action, I assert that no individual will ever vote for, or 
willingly assent to, a change, unless satisfied that that change will di¬ 
rectly benefit him individually, or that the action will bring improved 
general welfare to the community, in which event he is satisfied with 
proportional participation incident to that improvement. In other 
words, community action determines the average of individual interests, 
and secures the greatest good for the greatest number, which is the 
desideratum of organized society. 


24 


High School Debating Union 


PREVENTS SPECIAE EEGISTATION 

As a preventive of legislation against general welfare, the referen¬ 
dum operates in two ways. First, it discourages the passage of such 
measures by a legislature through realization that the people can and 
probably will defeat the same under the referendum. Second, if such 
legislation be passed either intentionally or through ignorance of its 
effect, the people can and will invoke the referendum power and thus 
prevent its becoming effective. 

EEIMINATES EEGISLATIVE BEACKMAIEER 

One of the most contemptible enemies of society is the legislative 
blackmailer—a member of a legislative body who introduces a bill 
unjustly attacking some business interest with no honest intent but for 
the purpose of inducing the threatened interests to pay for the aband¬ 
onment of the measure proposed. A public servant vested with legisla¬ 
tive power who thus violates his trust not only injures a private inter¬ 
est but brings the powers of government into contempt. Only physical 
courage is lacking to make such a man a highwayman or a pirate. His 
operations are the most dangerous because difficult to prove. The 
referendum affords a remedy, however, because any interest unjustly 
attacked in this manner can safely refuse to buy immunity or pay tri¬ 
bute, and, if the unjust bills be passed, can appeal to the people under 
the referendum, confident that the people will not give their approval 
to such legislation. Corporations in Oregon have not been held up with 
“pinch bills” since the initiative and referendum became effective in 
that state. 

devEeoping ineeuence ON EEGISEATORS 

The initiative and referendum also develop legislators by causing 
them in their deliberations to keep always in mind the interests and 
viewpoint of the people whose servants they are. This they will do 
through a realization that, having power to enact or defeat laws, the 
people will watch legislative proceedings and hold every legislator ac¬ 
countable for his acts. Under the referendum corruption of members 
of the legislature is practically eliminated because of the knowledge on 
the part of the persons desiring special legislation that even though 
enacted by the legislature, defeat of such laws is within the power of 
the people. 

We have heard much about the “rule of the mob” in connection with 
the initiative and referendum and the recall. A mob is a body of men 
acting against law, order, and justice. Legislatures sometimes do this— 
the people never, if given an opportunity to act in a lawful way. I 
grant that where wrongs have been long imposed and remedies have 
been denied, the people finally resort to force to redress their griev¬ 
ances, just as they did in the American Revolution. Resort to force 


The Initiative and Keferendum 


25 


came only after every peaceful means had been tried in vain and when 
longer endurance was impossible. 

To some this is mob action. I am disposed to give it a higher char¬ 
acterization; and, though it is an overthrow of existing authority, 
I regard it as the establishment of law and order in the highest sense. 
When the people of a republic, exercising their inherent right to change 
their laws and constitutions, vote to adopt new and better systems of 
government, I deny that this is mob action; it is the establishment of 
law and order. The overthrow of a misrepresentative system, main¬ 
tained by political machines enjoidng dictatorial powers, and the sub¬ 
stitution of a truly representative system means the attainment of 
higher standards of human justice and equality, and, consequently, of 
a more peaceful and more nearly perfect government. The voice of 
the people should be the law of the land; and, since the initiative and 
referendum and the recall register the voice of the people, they are 
the best mediums for the establishment of the best governmental prin¬ 
ciples. 

Adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall is in entire accord 
with the principles on which our government was founded. The most 
intellectual, most courageous, and most patriotic of the American 
people in 1776 declared that governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people 
to alter or abolish their form of government and to institute new gov¬ 
ernment, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its 
powers in such form as to them may seem most likely to effect their 
safety and happiness. Years of experience with legislatures chosen by 
special interests and executive administration wielding patronage pow¬ 
ers sufficient to force re-nomination, have convinced the American peo¬ 
ple that there is need for the initiative and referendum in the several 
states and for the other popular government laws, the direct primary, 
efficient corrupt practices act, recall, and, nationally, a presidential pref¬ 
erence law which will destroy the power of an administration to per¬ 
petuate itself in office or dictate the selection of its successor. The 
possession of the powers comprehended by these laws is sovereignty 
and the restoration of popular sovereignty is the chief function of the 
initiative, referendum and recall. 


THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

(By E. J. .Justice, delivered in the House of Representatives at Raleigh, 
on Tuesday, October 7, 101.3.) 

Those who favor the principles of the initiative and referendum ap¬ 
preciate that it is not a substitute of direct for representative govern¬ 
ment, but is an aid to representative government to guard against its 
becoming misrepresentative. They realize that representative govern- 



26 


High School Debating Union 


ment is a conventional system of legislation without calling into action 
the great body of the people, and thereby avoiding in most instances 
troubling the people with doing the things which can be done for them 
by their agents and representatives under the present system of rep¬ 
resentative government. There is nothing in the proposed bill which 
will disturb representative government, when it is representative, but 
there are often instances when so-called representative government is 
representative of special privileges and misrepresentative of the interest 
of the people. When this is true, it is a crude and inadequate system 
of government that furnishes no machinery whereby the people can 
assert their will and enact it into law. Representative government is 
merely a convenience, and an agency, subject by right to the direct 
control of the people. It is not sufficient to assert this as a principle, 
but those who believe it, should not hesitate to provide machinery to 
make it possible for the people to put this principle into action. This 
State and each of the other states in the American Union was founded 
upon the principles that the people were sovereign, and had a right, if 
they pleased, to manage their government directly, and that this right 
was inalienable and indefensible; that under this right the people 
should have the power directly to order, amend, or abolish any law. 
Every state constitution in the American Union declares and exempli¬ 
fies this fundamental principle, and each of the constitutions of the 
several states, except one, was established by this direct law-making 
power of the people. 

In North Carolina the constitution of the state cannot be changed 
without the direct vote of the people. The people have not had confi¬ 
dence enough in the wisdom of the General Assembly to allow it, with¬ 
out their approval at a general election, held for the entire State, to 
change their organic laws. This would indicate that the people of 
North Carolina believe, and in this respect they put into practice, the 
theory, that all of the people are more intelligent than a part of them. 
This theory is absolutely correct, and the application of it in this in¬ 
stance is necessary in order to safeguard the rights of the people. 
Those states which have the initiative and referendum have not been 
troubled with too frequent elections, but have made their governments 
representative by merely having in their possession the power to pre¬ 
vent them from being misrepresentative. The bill proposed provides 
for all state elections under the initiative and referendum to be held at 
regular general state elections. Those who have observed the workings 
of the initiative and referendum in states which have it, have been com¬ 
pelled to admit that the reducing to practice of the theory of our govern¬ 
ment, that all government derives its just powers from the consent of 
the governed, is workable, sound and beneficial. The initiative and ref¬ 
erendum merely gives to the people the option to use it when they think 
they have been misrepresented by their agents. 


The Initiative and Referendum 


27 


The Declaration of the thirteen states of America, which was issued 
July 4, 1776, said: “Whenever any form of government becomes de¬ 
structive of these ends (that is, the ends recited in the Declaration of 
Independence) it is the right of the people to order or abolish it, and to 
institute government, laying its 'foundations on such principles and 
organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely 
to affect their safety and happiness.” 

The constitution of North Carolina adopted in 1776 declared: “That 
all political power is vested in that derived from the people only.” 
Under the present laws of North Carolina, it is impossible for the 
people to have an opportunity to vote on an amendment to the consti¬ 
tution, unless they are permitted to do so by the vote of three-fifths of 
each House of the General Assembly; or, unless a convention of the 
people is called by two-thirds of all the members of each House of 
the General Assembly. Thus a minority of either House of the Gen¬ 
eral Assembly prevents the people from having an opportunity to ex¬ 
press their will with respect to any change in the constitution. Under 
the present law, all the people might petition the General Assembly 
for an opportunity to vote on a proposed amendment to the constitu¬ 
tion, and a minority of either House of the General Assembly could 
refuse this. 

This machinery does not comport with the Declaration of Rights in 
our present constitution, which is in part as follows: “That all po¬ 
litical power is divested in and derived from the people; all govern¬ 
ment of rights originate from the people; is founded upon their will 
only, and is instituted only for the good of the whole.” The pro¬ 
visions of the proposed amendment do conform to this declaration of 
rights in our constitution and with the principle upon which our gov¬ 
ernment is founded. I do not think that the adoption of the initiative 
and referendum by the several states indicates that it will be adopted 
by the United States. There are many reasons why it is workable in 
the states that do not apply in the case of the general government. 

The President of the United States, Mr. Wilson; the Secretary of 
State, Mr. Bryan, and others of the greatest reformers of the day, 
are unqualifiedly committed to the principle of initiative and refer¬ 
endum. 

Wilson's vilws 

On August 6, 1911, in the Outlook, the present president of the United 
States, who was then governor of New Jersey, said: “For fifteen 
years I taught my classes the initiative and referendum would not work. 
I can prove it now; but the trouble is they do. * * * Back 

of all other reforms there is the means of getting it. Back of 
the question ‘What do we want?’ is the question ‘How are we 
going to* get it?’ The immediate thing we have got to do 
is to resume popular government. * * * \Ve are cleaning house. 


28 


High School Debating Union 


and in order to clean house, the one thing we need is a good broom. 
The initiative and referendum are good brooms.” The Democratic 
party declared in its platform in 1900: “We favor direct legislation 
wherever practicable.” In 1908 it declared; “We rejoice at the in¬ 
creasing signs of an awakening throughout the country.” The various 
investigations have traced grafts and political corruption to the repre¬ 
sentatives of special privilege classes and laid bare the unscrupulous 
methods by which they have debauched elections, and laid oppression 
upon a defenceless public through subservient officials, whom they have 
raised to place in power. The conscience of the nation is now aroused 
and will free the government from the grip of those who have made it 
a business asset. It must become, again, the people’s government, and 
be administered in all departments according to the Jeffersonian maxim, 
“Equal rights to all; special privileges to none.” Shall the people rule? 
is the overwhelming issue which manifests itself in all the questions 
now under discussion. Party lines will be broken down, and the people 
who believe in representative government will come together to fight 
for it, unless existing parties tnake themselves instruments for the 
accomplishment of the people’s wills. The people can only rule by 
having the right of direct legislation, which they may exercise at their 
option when they need to exercise the right to prevent misrepresenta¬ 
tion. They do not wish to exercise this right except in important cases. 
They prefer their representative to make, judge, and execute the law; 
but they demand that this shall be done in the fear of God and the ser¬ 
vice of the people. It is only when their representatives fail to rep¬ 
resent the people, that the people care to exercise direct power. Under 
an arrangement whereby the people may exercise direct power at their 
option, the representatives would make it unnecessary for the people 
to resort to this power; because of the “big stick” of public opinion’s be” 
ing available through the initiative and referendum the representatives 
will respond to mature and deliberately formed public opinion and serve 
the people under these circumstances, when they might not if the people 
had no power to correct abuses. 

SEVENTEEN STATES ADOPT PRINCIPEE 

Seventeen of the States of the American Union have adopted the 
principle of the initiative and referendum, and it has never been de¬ 
parted from, where once adopted. It is now, or has this year, been 
before the people in four other states. It has never been defeated but 
once, and that was in Missouri, and subsequently the people of Missouri 
reversed themselves and adopted it, and now have it in operation. The 
initiative and referendum mean the adoption of machinery necessary 
for the complete overthrow of corrupt political machines.. The last 
platform of the Democratic party contains these words: “The Demo¬ 
cratic party offers itself to the country as an agency through which the 


The I^^itiative and Iyeferendum 


29 


complete overthrow and extermination of corruption, fraud and ma¬ 
chine rule in American politics can be affected.” The State Farmers’ 
Union, composed of forty thousand citizens and voters, has several 
times in recent annual meetings endorsed the recommendation of its 
president favoring the adoption of the initiative and referendum in 
North Carolina. One of the advantages of the initiative and referen¬ 
dum when put into practice, is, a salutary increase of responsibility is 
thereby thrown upon the voter. It brings him to some purpose into 
closer touch with governmental affairs; it enables him to settle 
something at an election besides the party label of an officeholder, 
which in turn settles little except which man shall draw the salary. 

Some people profess to believe that the option vested in the people 
to reverse its representatives will result in “mob rule.” This must be 
taken to mean that the people, after weeks of deliberation and with 
adequate information, would not support such schemes of so-called 
representatives of the people. This is not “mob rule.” “Mob rule” 
finds its most promising field in nominating conventions and mass 
meetings held at times and under circumstances when the people are 
taken unawares. The initiative and referendum is a safeguard against 
the only thing likely, with us, to lead to violent revolution; namely, 
machine rule for the benefit and privilege of a few. Majority rule 
excludes both “mob rule” and machine rule. 

The late Associate Justice Brewer, of the United States Supreme 
Court, put the case accurately and well when he said: 

“The two supreme dangers that menace a democratic state are 
despotism on the one hand and mob rule on the other. The more 
constant and universal the voice of the people makes itself manifest 
the nearer do we approach to an ideal government. The initiative and 
referendum make public opinion the controlling factor in the govern¬ 
ment. The more promptly and fully public officers carry into effect 
such public opinion, the more truly is government of the people 
realized.” 

bt'N^ett to electorate 

One who is in a frame of mind to consider new things on their 
merits cannot help but feel that the standard of thought of the 
public would be, in the long run, the most important feature of the 
system. It tends automatically to produce a highly trained and self- 
respecting electorate, and to lay the deepest and most promising found¬ 
ation for permanent good. It is the only orderly means known for ac¬ 
curately and unmistakably ascertaining the public desire, and for mak¬ 
ing this desire prevail. It is as effective a balance wheel against mere 
popular clamor, as it is a safeguard against the silent scheming of the 
few. It opens for the first time, a fair prospect for the early realiza¬ 
tion of the cherished American ideal: “A government by the people, 
for the people and of the people.” 


30 


High School Debating Union 


The important features of the bill proposed by your committee are: 
First, that when a petition signed by fifteen per cent, of the voters 
of the entire State request it, there shall be at the next regular general 
election, a vote by the people upon a particular proposition to amend 
the Constitution. This fifteen per cent, must not only be fifteen per 
cent of the entire voters of the state, but it must include fifteen per 
cent of at least fifty different counties of the state. Second, it pro¬ 
vides that when five per cent of the people petition the enactment of a 
particular law, the General Assembly shall either enact it or refuse to 
enact it; and, if they refuse to enact it, upon the adjournment of the 
General Assembly, a petition of ten per cent more of the people of the 
entire state will require the submission of the law to the voters of 
the state at the next regular general election. Third, when ten per 
cent, of the people indicate by petition that they are dissatisfied and 
object to a particular law passed by the General Assembly and ask for 
a vote on it, that question shall be submitted to the people at the next 
regular general election. In each case where a given per cent, of the 
voters are required to sign a petition, it is provided that not only that 
per cent of the voters of the entire state, but that per cent of the 
voters of at least fifty counties of the state. In that way it Avill be 
certain that no election can be held unless the sentiment for it is gen¬ 
eral. Fourth, provision is made for the General Assembly to provide 
for the people of particular counties or cities or towns to demand a 
vote with respect to matters that affect these limited territories. The 
machinery for putting into operation these petitions, how they shall be 
signed and verified, and for holding the elections, is either provided 
for in the proposed amendment or there is a direction to the General 
Assembly to make provisions for carrying out this amendment. The 
machinery is similar to that adopted in other states where the initiative 
and referendum has worked with general satisfaction. 


“WHAT HAVE THE PEOPLE OF OREGON ACCOMPLISHED 
WITH THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM?” 

Oregon City, Oregon, March i6, 1910. 

Answering your question, “What have the people of Orgeon accom¬ 
plished with the initiative and referendum,” I set down the following 
acts. 

1. They have made a direct primary nominating elections law that is 
much more satisfactory in its results than was the old convention plan. 

2. They have adopted practical methods of selecting their United 
States senators, securing election by the legislature of the candidates 
selected by the people, thereby abolishing the greatest single source of 
corruption, waste, and confusion in the legislature. 



The Initiative and Referendum ' 31 

3. They have destroyed the political machine and the job of the 
party bosses. 

4. They have abolished railroad passes within the State for public 
officers as well as for private individuals. 

5. They have stopped the grafters’ sale of franchises in Portland 
and other cities. 

6 . They have deprived the legislature of power to call a constitu¬ 
tional convention without the people’s approval on referendum vote. 

7. They have given cities home rule in charter making. 

8. They have taught the legislature to respect the constitutional 
provision against putting special appropriations in the general appro¬ 
priation bill. 

9. They have added the recall to the constitution, giving the people 
the power to discharge state and local officers who prove incompetent 
or untrustworthy. 

10. They have removed the constitutional restrictions preventing 
proportional representation and the election by a majority instead of a 
plurality vote. 

11. They have passed laws rejected by the legislature for taxing 
certain corporations. 

12. They have rejected some unpopular appropriations made by the 
legislature. 

13. They have made a stringent law against the excessive use of 
money in elections; a law which is designed, so far as money is con¬ 
cerned, to put a poor man on equal footing with a rich man in seeking 
public office. It limits candidates to an expense hardly exceeding one- 
fourth of a year’s salary in the office sought, and the State bears a 
large part of the outlay in the distribution of literature for parties 
and candidates. 

14. They have made a start toward protecting and preserving sal¬ 
mon and sturgeon in the Columbia river and its tributaries. 

15. They are developing a sense of individual responsibility for the 
success of self-government in Oregon, such as most men never felt 
when the legislature had the exclusive right to make laws and propose 
constitutional amendments. 

16. In addition to the above list of results, other measures have 
been secured and the people have rejected eleven measures, some pro¬ 
posed by initiative petitions and some proposed by the legislature. 

Whuam S. U’Ren. 

To THE Direct Legiseation League oe the State oe Washington, 

4144 Fourteenth Avenue N. B., Seattle, Washington. 


32 


High School Debating Union 


“ A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY ” 

(By Tlioodore Koosevolt, bofore the Constitutional Convention of Ohio, Feb¬ 
ruary 21, 1912.) 

I believe in the initiative and referendum, which should be used not 
to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it 
becomes misrepresentative. Here, again, I am concerned not with 
thories but with actual facts. If in any State the people are themselves 
satisfied with their present representative system, then it is of course 
their right to keep this system unchanged; and it is nobody’s business 
but theirs. But in actual practice it has been found in very many 
states that legislative bodies have not been responsive to the popular 
will. Therefore I believe that the state should provide for the possi¬ 
bility of direct popular action in order to make good such legislative 
failure. The power to invoke such direct action both by initiative and 
referendum, should be provided in such fashion as to prevent its being 
wantonly or too frequently used. I do not believe that it should be 
made the easy or ordinary way of taking action. In the great majority 
of cases it is far better that action on legislative matters should be 
taken by those specially delegated to perform the task; in other words, 
that the work should be done by experts chosen to perform it. But 
where the men thus delegated fail to perform their dut}^ then it should 
be in the power of the people themselves to perform the duty. In a 
recent speech Gov. McGovern, of Wisconsin, has described the plan 
which has been there adopted. Under this plan the effort to obtain the 
law is first to be made through the legislature, the bill being pushed 
as far as it will go; so that the details of the proposed measure may 
be threshed over in actual legislative debate. This gives opportunity to 
perfect it in form and invites public scrutiny. Then, if the legislature 
fails to enact it, it can be enacted by the people on their own initiative, 
taken at least four, months before election. Moreover, where possible, 
the question actually to be voted on by the people should be made as 
simple as possible. 

In short, I believe that the initiative and referendum should be 
used, not as substitutes for representative government, but as methods 
of making such government really representative. Action by the initi¬ 
ative or referendum ought not to be the normal way of leglislation; 
but the power to take it should l)e provided in the constitution, so that 
if the representatives fail truly to represent the people on some matter 
of sufficient importance to rouse popular interest, then the people 
should have in their hands the facilities to make good the failure. 
And I urge you not to try to put constitutional fetters on the legisla¬ 
ture, as so many constitution makers have recently done. Such action 
on your part would invite the courts to render nugatory every legisla¬ 
tive act to better social conditions. Give the legislature an entirely 


The Initiative and Refeeenduh 


33 


free hand and then provide by the initiative and referendum that the 
people shall have power to reverse or supplement the work of the 
legislature should it ever become necessary. 


“ FREEMEN NEED NO GUARDIANS ” 

(By Woodrow AYilson, in liis book ‘‘The New Freedom.”) 

I believe, as I believe in nothing else, in the average integrity and 
the average intelligence of the American people, and I do not believe 
that the intelligence of America can be put into commission anywhere. 
I do not believe that there is any group of men of any kind to whom 
we can afford to give that kind of trusteeship. 

I will not live under trustees if I can help it. No group of men less 
than the majority has a right to tell me how I have got to live in 
America. I will submit to the majority, because I have been trained 
to do it,—though I may sometimes have my private opinion even of 
the majority. I do not care how wise, how patriotic, the trustees may 
be, I have never heard of any group of men in whose hands I am 
willing to lodge the liberties of America in trust. 

If any part of our people want to be wards, if they want to have 
guardians put over them, if they want to be taken care of, if they want 
to be children, patronized by the government, why, I am sorry, because 
it will sap the manhood of America. But I don’t believe they do. I 
believe they want to stand on the firm foundation of law and right and 
take care of themselves. I, for my part, don’t want to belong to a 
nation, I believe that I do not belong to a nation, that needs to be taken 
care of by guardians. I want to belong to a nation, and I am proud 
that I do belong to a nation, that ki^ws how to take care of itself. 
If I thought that the American people were reckless, were ignorant, were 
vindictive, I might shrink from putting the government into their hands. 
But the beauty of Democracy is that when you are reckless you destroy 
your own established conditions of life; when you are vindictive you 
wreak vengeance upon yourself; the whole stability of a democratic 
polity rests upon the fact that every interest is every man’s interest. 

There are tasks av/aiting the government of the United States which 
it cannot perform until every pulse of that government beats in unison 
with the needs and desires of the whole body of the American people. 
Shall we not give the people access of sympathy, access of authority, 
to the instrumentalities which are to be indispensable to their lives? 


3 



34 


High School Debating Union 


A TWO BILLION DOLLAR DELAY 

(Prom the Prospectus of the National Popular Government League.) 

The Income Tax amendment to the constitution of the United 
States is adopted but it has taken i8 years of fighting to secure it since 
the law passed by Congress was declared unconstitutional in 1895. Dur¬ 
ing this time the wealth of the nation has escaped just taxation for the 
support of the national government in a sum estimated at not less than 
$2,000,000,000, which the rest of the people have had to make good. 

The Supreme Court has, by interpretation, several times amended the 
Constitution in effect. It wields not only judicial but sovereign and 
legislative powers. Today tremendous new problems press for solution. 
But no legislation for the social, economic or political betterment of 
the people is valid if five men—a majority of the Supreme Court— 
happen to construe it as inconsistent with a Constitution written a cen¬ 
tury and a quarter ago. 

If we attempt to amend the Constitution here is what we find. 

It is possible for 33 men (Senators) out of a total of 531 members 
of Congress to prevent the submission of any amendment however 
much needed. It is possible for majorities in the legislatures of the 
13 smallest states, representing one-fortieth part of the population of 
the nation to prevent the adoption of any amendment. 

How can majority rule obtain, or the will of a people be expressed in 
a government where five men can, by judicial decision, veto national 
and state legislation, and an absurdly small minority frustrate any at¬ 
tempt to modify the fundamental law of the land? 


NINETY YEARS FOR ONE AMENDMENT 

(From the Prospectus of the National Popular Government League.) 

The direct election of the United States senators was first proposed 
90 years ago, and for over 40 years a majority of the American people 
have vigorously and persistently demanded this reform. When we 
pause to consider the number of prolonged senatorial “deadlocks” 
which have occurred during that time, with the attendant corruption of 
state legislatures and neglect of their proper business, to say nothing 
of the record of the Senate itself, the moral and financial cost to the 
nation of this long delay staggers the imagination. 



Ref erences^N egative 


“REPRESENTATIVE AS AGAINST DIRECT GOVERNMENT” 

(By Samuel W. McCall, in the Atlantic Monthly, Volume, 108, October, 1911.) 

It is not always that there is a direct relation between sound and 
fury of language and its real meaning, but such imposing words as 
the Initiative, the Referendum, and the Recall do not indicate innova¬ 
tions of a light and trifling kind in the character of our institutions. 
As the doctrines which they convey are practiced in some of the states 
of the^ Union, and as they are proposed for adoption in other states, 

they involve no less than a radical change in our method* of 

government. In effect, they propose the substitution of direct for 
representative government, the establishment of the direct action of 
the people, not merely in selecting their agents, but in framing and exe¬ 
cuting their laws. 

To most of us the proposals are full of novelty, and it is not too 

much to say that, as a people, we have given them no consideration 

worthy of the name. Have we explored the past to learn whether 
similar experiments have been tried; and, if tried, what has been the 
effect? Have we reflected upon the obvious limitations upon the utter¬ 
ance by great masses of men of final and definite regulations for the 
conduct of a complex society? Have we considered to what extent 
the most doubtful results under our present structure of government 
are due to the overzeal of representatives to respond to the transient 
and noisy, and often misleading, • manifestations of popular opinion, 
and to their failure to act bravely as the instruments, not of the peoples’ 
passions, but of their interests, and to require them to select other 
agents, if they shall insist upon the doing of wrong? 

At the threshold of the discussion we encounter the usual epithets. 
The advocates of change are apt to seek popular favor by decorating 
themselves and their proposed innovation with some lofty adjective, 
and in a similar fashion to cover their opponents with obloquy. The 
quality assumed by the proponents of one or all of this trinity of 
reforms may be expressed in the word ‘progressive.’ They are advocating 
‘progressive’ methods of government, while those who disagree with 
them stand for reactionary methods. ‘Progressive’ is an alluring word. 
Everybody believes in progress if it be of the proper kind, and a due 
amount of vociferation on the part of those claiming a monopoly of 
the virtue may serve to banish skepticism as to the kind. But if the 
question were to be settled by epithets, there is some ground at least 
for asserting that they should be transposed in their application. Repre- 



36 


IIiGiE School Debating Union 


sentative government is comparatively modern; direct government of 
the democratic kind is ancient; and the latter was deliberately dis¬ 
carded for the former by the founders of our government. I will not 
cite such a statesman as Madison, not because the heavy debt which the 
cause of free and regulated popular government owes him can ever be 
discharged, but because in the passionate rhetoric of the self-styled 
‘progressive’ he is set down as a reactionary. I will choose an authority 
who still remains above suspicion, and will take the author of the 
Declaration of Independence, which even today is considered radical 
in its democracy. In speaking of ‘the equal rights of man,’ Thomas 
Jefferson declared that:— 

“Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered 
the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit,—govern¬ 
ment by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen 
by themselves.” 

The framers of the constitution were entirely familiar with the fail¬ 
ure of direct democracy in the government of numerous populations, 
and they were influenced by their knowledge of that failure in devising 
our own structure of republication government. It is now proposed 
to abandon the discovery of modern times, to which Jefferson referred, 
and which he declared to be the only method by which rights can be 
secured, and to put in its stead the discarded device of the ancients. 
Who, then, are the reactionaries; those who are opposed to the substi¬ 
tution of direct for representative government and are in favor of the 
progressive principles of the American Constitution, or the supporters 
of direct government who advocate the return to the reactionary policies 
which thousands of years ago demonstrated their destructive effects 
upon the government of any considerable population? It does not 
follow that to be a reactionary is to be wrong. The wise reactionary 
may sometimes preserve the government of the state, and even its 
civilization. Whether the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall embody 
sound political principles must be determined by other tests. But 
their advocates should not mascpierade. If they choose to attach to 
themselves any label, they should frankly spread upon their banner the 
word ‘reactionary’. 

The framers of our constitution were endeavoring to establish a 
government which should have sway over a great territory and a 
population already large and which they knew would rapidly increase. 
They were about to consummate the most democratice movement that 
had ever occurred on a grand scale in the history of the world. They 
well knew from the experiments of the past the inevitable limitations 
upon direct democratic government, and, being statesmen as well as 
democrats, they sought to make their government enduring by guard¬ 
ing against the excesses which had so often brought popular government 


The Initiative and Refeeexdum 


37 


to destruction. They established a government which Lincoln called 
‘of the people, by the people, for the people,’ and in order effectively 
to create it they adopted limitations which would make its continued’ 
existence possible. They knew that, if the governmental energy became 
too much diluted and dissolved, the evils of anarchy would result, 
and that there would follow a reaction to the other extreme, with the 
resulting overthrow of popular rights. They saw clearly the line over 
which they might not pass in pretended devotion to the democratic 
idea without establishing government of the demagogue, by the 
demagogue and for the demagogue, with the recoil in favor of auto¬ 
cracy sure speedily to follow; for they knew that the men of the race 
from which they sprang would not long permit themselves to be the 
victims of misgovernment, and that they would prefer even auto¬ 
cracy to a system under which the great ends of government should 
not be secured, or should be perverted. 

We are in danger of forgetting the essential purpose of government: 
that it is not an end, but a means, that the people do not exist for 
the government but that the government exists for the people. The 
idolatry of government, or of its institutions, has been as debasing and 
injurious as any idolatry that has ever afflicted mankind. It has 
frequently been the agent of gross and wholesale oppression; it has 
frequently been the means by which many have been kept in servitude 
and subjection; and, until the establishment of our own system, the 
governmxents have been few which have had for their chief purpose to 
safeguard and protect the individual, and hold over him the shield of 
law, so that he might be secure in his life, his liberty, the fruits of his 
labor, and in his right as an equal member of the state. 

And when I speak of the individuals, I mean the chief thing that is es¬ 
sential in the meaning of the term ‘the people.’ I do not accept the 
latter term in the sense in which it is so often sweetly used by those 
who desire our votes. I am unable to see how any good, coming to 
a mass of men, can be felt in any other way than by the individuals in 
the mass. And until spmebody shall point out a higher consciousness 
than that of the individual man or woman or child, he can hardly be 
heard to deny that the individual man or woman or child is the ulti¬ 
mate concern of the state. 

The notion that there is a collective personality called ‘the people,’ 
separated from the individuals who compose it, and which may be used 
to oppress each one and all of its component parts in turn, may well 
have been a conception of the Greek demagogues by whom it was so 
fittingly illustrated in practice. I cannot understand how there can be 
any freedom that is not in the last analysis individual freedom. 
However great a mass of men you may have in a nation, however 
powerful physically it may be, if each individual is the victim of oppres¬ 
sion, if he is denied rights, if there is no forum open to him, where he 


38 


High School Debating Union 


can be heard to say against a majority, ‘This is mine,’—then ‘the people’ 
have no such thing as liberty, they have no such thing as popular 
rights. As to the ‘composite citizen,’ he obviously is nobody who ever 
has existed, or ever will exist. When the advocates of a reform, ignore 
the man of flesh and blood in the street, or conduct the operations 
with reference to this mythical person they should emigrate to Utopia. 

Is it for the interest of the individual members of our society to have 
the great mass of us pass upon the intricate details of legislation, exe¬ 
cute our laws and to administer justice between man and man? That 
I believe to be in substance the question raised by the Initiative the 
Referendum, and the Recall, as they are now practically applied in at 
least one of the states in the Union, the example of which is held 
up as a model to the other states. With an infinitesemal responsibility, 
with only one vote in a million, how seriously would each one of us 
feel called upon to withdraw from his own private pursuits and to 
explore in all their details the complicated questions of government? 
It would be imposing an impossible task, scattered as we are and un¬ 
able to take common council, to require us in the mass to direct the work 
of government. 

First, with regard to the Initiative. In our legislation the work of 
investigation and of perfecting details is of such difficulty that proposed 
laws are distributed among various committees which are charged 
with the duty of considering their exact terms. The legislative body as 
a whole, although its members are paid for doing the work, cannot safe¬ 
ly assume to pass upon the intricate questions of legislation without 
investigation by committees selected with reference to their fitness for 
the task. The proposed law as perfected by a committee is brought 
before the representative assembly and it is there again discussed and 
subjected to criticism, both as to policy and to form, and in this open 
discussion, defects often appear which require amendment, and some¬ 
times the defeat of the bill. And even with these safeguards laws of¬ 
ten find their way upon the statute books which are not best adapted 
to secure the purposes even of their authors. 

But what would be the procedure under the Initiative? In Oregon 
a law may be initiated upon a petition of eight per cent of the voters, 
and it then goes to the people upon the question of its final enactment 
without the intervention of any legislature. Some man has a beautiful 
general idea for the advancement of mankind, but beautiful general 
ideas are exceedingly difficult to put into statutory form so that they 
may become the rule of conduct for a multitude of men. Another 
man may have some selfish project, which, like most selfish projects 
may be concealed under specious word. The beautiful idea of the 
selfish scheme is written by its author in the form of law and he pro¬ 
ceeds to get the requisite number of signers to a petition. With a due 


The Initiative and Eeferendum 


39 


amount of energy and the payment of canvassers these signatures can 
be secured by the carload, and the proposed law then goes to the people 
for enactment, and the great mass of us, on the farm, on the hillside 
and in the city, proceed to take the last step in making a law which 
nine out of ten of us have never read. And this is called securing popu¬ 
lar rights, and giving the people a larger share in their government! 

The people, at the election in Oregon held in 1910, passed upon 
proposed laws which filled a volume of two hundred pages, and they 
passed upon them all in a single day, each voter recording his verdict 
at the polling booth upon both the candidates and the proposed laws. 
In the ordinary legislative body, made up of no different material from 
that of which the people are composed, an important question may be 
considered for a day, or even for a week: and then, with the arguments 
fresh in their minds, the legislators record their votes upon the single 
measure. What a delightful jumble we should have if forty different 
statutes were voted upon in the space of a half-hour by the members 
of a humdrum legislature! 

Of course, one must be cautious about expressing a doubt that the 
people in their collective capacity can accomplish impossibilities. You 
may say of an individual that he should have some special preparation 
before he attempts to set a broken arm or perform a delicate operation 
upon the eye. But if you say that of all of us in a lump, some popular 
tribune will denounce you. And yet there is ground for the heretical 
suspicion, admitting that each one of the people may have in him the 
making of a great legislator, if there should be one simple prerequisite 
which he should observe in order to be any sort of a legislator at all. 
He should first read or attempt to understand the provisions of a bill 
before solemnly enacting it into law. One can scarcely be accused of 
begging the question to say that the voters would not read a whole 
volume of laws before voting upon them. The slightest knowledge of 
human nature would warrant that assertion. 

How many even of the most intelligent of our people, of college 
professors, of ministers, read the statutes that have already been passed 
and that are to govern their conduct? Even lawyers are not apt to read 
them generally, but in connection with particular cases. But if some 
proof were necessary, one has only to cite some of the Oregon laws. 
For example, there are two methods of pursuing the salmon fisheries 
in the Columbia river: in the lower and sluggish waters of the stream, 
fishing is done by the net; and in the upper waters by the wheel. 
The net fishermen desired to prohibit fishing by the wheel, and they 
procured sufficient signatures and initiated a law having that object 
in view. On the other hand, the wheel fishermen at the same time 
wished to restrict fishing by the net, and they initiated a law for that 
purpose. Both laws went before the people at the same election and 
they generously passed them both, and thus, so far as the action of the 


40 


High School Debatixg Uiviox 


people was concerned, the great salmon fisheries of the Columbia were 
practically stopped. 

A law was ‘initiated’ by signatures and was enacted by the people at 
the election in November, 1910, providing for the election of delegates 
to the national political convention by popular vote. The law forbade 
each voter to vote for more than one candidate. But upon the usual 
basis of apportionment Oregon was entitled to ten delegates in a national 
convention. If some candidate should be preeminently fitted above 
all others for the place and should receive all the votes, the state would 
have only a single delegate in the convention. If the voter has the right 
to vote for all the candidates for the whole representation of his state 
in the Electoral College, what semblance of a reason can there be why 
he should not have the same participation in the preliminary election, 
when the candidate, who may finally be elected president is to be chosen? 
The same law forbids the voter from voting for the nomination of more 
than one candidate for presidential elector. Thus the minority of a 
party in the state may nominate candidates for electors hostile to its 
presidential candidate. 

If the vote of the presidential electors of Oregon shall not some¬ 
times be divided, even though the popular vote may have been strongly 
in favor of a given candidate, it will not be the fault of this law. 

It seems rather superfluous to cite instances to prove that where the 
final legislative body is denied the power of meeting and discussing the 
provisions of the proposed law, there will be loose and freakish legis¬ 
lation of the worst kind. Mr. Woodrow Wilson before he essayed 
the exacting role of the practical politician, declared before the students 
of Columbia University, that a government cannot act inorganically 
by masses. It must have a law-making body. It can no more make 
laws through its voters than it can make laws through its newspapers. 
And in the same course of lectures he declared that, “We sometimes 
allow ourselves to assume that the Initiative and the Referendum, now 
so much talked of and so imperfectly understood, are a more thorough 
means of getting up public opinion than the processes of our legisla¬ 
tive assemblies. Many a radical program may get what may seem to 
be almost general approval if you listen only to those who know they 
will not have to handle the perilous matter of action, and to those who 
have merely formed an independent, that is, an isolated opinion, and 
have not entered into common counsel; but you will seldom find a 
deliberative assembly acting half so rapidly as its several members 
have professed themselves ready to act before they came together 
into one place and talked the matter over and contrived statutes.” 

After Mr. Wilson entered upon his political career, he changed his 
mind, but his recantation in no degree affects the weight of the argu¬ 
ment to which I have referred. The common counsel of which he 
speaks is an indispensable process in the making of law, and whenever 


The Initiative and Iiefei{exdu:\i 


41 


our legislative bodies impose serious limitations upon the process it 
is usually to the detriment of the character of the laws passed; and the 
more grave and statesmanlike the deliberation of those charged with 
the responsibility the better it will be for the state. For this vital process 
there will be substituted the enthusiasm of somebody who believes he 
has devised some statutory cure-all for the ills that afflict the body 
politic and embodies his enthusiasm in a bill. He seconds himself, as 
any one may, with the necessary signatures to a petition; and then with¬ 
out coming together and taking common counsel, and often without 
reading what has been written, the great mass of us solemnly proceed 
to vote. Such a procedure would put a test upon the people under 
which no nation could long endure. 

The Referendum is somewhat better than the Initiative, but as a 
settled policy in the making of ordinary statutes it is indefensible. 
It can be used upon complete propositions that are not complex in char¬ 
acter, and especially upon constitutional propositions which ordinarily 
enunciate general principles. In the case of constitutional changes, 
however, they should never take effect without a support of a clear 
majority of the voters, and in advance of their -action they should have 
the support of a large majority of the legislative body, such as is pro¬ 
vided in Massachusetts, so that our constitution should have more 
stability than mere statutes and should not be subject to change with 
every passing breeze. 

I may illustrate again from the example of Oregon,—which is 
pointed out by the friends of these plans as a model, and whose people 
are heroically subjecting themselves to political vivisection in the test¬ 
ing of governmental experiments. An amendment may be made to the 
constitution of that state by a majority of those who vote upon the 
proposition in question. An amendment was passed in one election by 
barely one third of the legal voters, which provided that in civil cases 
three-fourths of the jury might render a verdict that no new trial 
should be had where there was any evidence at all to sustain the ver¬ 
dict, and making another important change in the method of adminis¬ 
tering justice. Constitutional changes could not be made except in 
reference to a pronounced and settled public opinion, which cannot 
better be determined under our system than to require the action of 
successive legislatures and afterwards a direct vote of the people. 

The Referendum may sometimes profitably be used in connection with 
questions affecting municipalities, where each voter has an appreciable 
interest in the solution of the question and is familiar with the condi¬ 
tions upon which the solution depends; but as a step in the process of 
passing statutes of the usual character, statutes which create crimes and 
provide penalties for their violation, or which have complicated regula¬ 
tions of a business character, the use of the Referendum would be 


42 


High School Debating Union 


vicious. We are not in the mass adapted to pass upon questions of de¬ 
tails, just as the thousands of stockholders of a great corporation are 
not in position to manage its business affairs. The function which we 
can best exercise is that of selecting agents for that purpose and hold¬ 
ing them responsible for results. Upon the questions relating to the 
character of representatives, who are usually known personally to the 
people, they have excellent means for forming a judgment. But if they 
so often make a mistake in their judgment of the men they select, as 
we must infer from the arguments put forward in favor of direct legis¬ 
lation, how much more would they be apt to make mistakes in dealing 
with the complicated questions involved in practical legislation? 

The Referendum takes away from the legislature the responsibility 
for the final passage of laws and permits it to shift the burden upon 
the people. Legislators will be asked: “Are you not willing to trust 
the people to say in their wisdom whether a given bill should be 
enacted?” The prevailing vice of members of law-making bodies in 
our country is not venality, it is political cowardice, and they will be 
ready to take refuge in that invitation to trust the people. A witty 
member of Congress from Mississippi once said that he usually found 
it easier to do wrong than to explain why he did right. There will be no 
such difficulty under the Referendum. The legislator may dodge the 
responsibility of voting upon some bad but specious law, where his 
political interest would lead him to vote one way and his sense of duty 
another way. He would only need to say that he believed in the people, 
and would vote to refer it to that supreme court of appeal. Even under 
the present system a legislator is quite too much influenced by the noisy 
demonstrations that may be made upon one side or the other of a pend¬ 
ing proposition, and some of the worst laws that And their way upon the 
statute books get there, not because they are approved by the judgment 
of the legislator, but in response to what he thinks may be the wishes of 
the people. And instead of voting for what he honestly believed to be 
just and in the public interest, even against what may appear at the 
moment to be popular sentiment, and then bravely going before his con¬ 
stituents and attempting to educate them upon the question, he quite 
too often tacks and goes before the wind. 

While the prevailing fault of legislative bodies is, as I have said, 
political cowardice, the fault of the voter is political indifference. There 
are far too few of us who carefully study public questions and try to 
secure exact information about them. We are attracted by sensational 
charges, by lurid headlines in the newspapers, and by generalities. We 
too often complacently accept the estimate that is placed upon our pro¬ 
found and exact political knowledge by the men who are asking us to 
vote for them, and we are far from giving that serious attention to the 
political issues which we bestow upon our own private affairs. 


The Initiative and Keeerendum 


43 


There is a lawyer of very high standing at the bar of his state who 
was astonished to be told that the House of Representatives had an es¬ 
tablished order of business which consumed the greater part of its time. 
He imagined that the speaker had practically unlimited discretion in 
recognition. Another intelligent man who was president of a great rail¬ 
road could not give the name of his member of Congress, although he 
had probably voted for him ten years, if he had voted at all. Such 
instances are by no means rare, and intelligent people of that sort who 
neglect their public duties often become the easy victims of every -ism 
and -dum. 

We are so engrossed in our private business that many of us give 
no attention to public questions, or we too frequently bestow upon the 
latter such superficial study that our action becomes the dangerous 
thing that is based upon little knowledge. This condition of indifference 
even under our present system, produces nothing but an evil effect upon 
the character of law; and this evil effect would be greatly intensified 
under the Initiative and Referendum. Legislation may be expected to 
represent in the long run the fair average of the information and the 
study of the body which enacts it, whether that body be composed of 
400 legislators or 100,000,000 of people. 

A reform that is most needed is one that will make difficult the 
passage of laws unless they repeal existing statutes. The mania of the 
time is too much legislation and the tendency to regulate everybody 
and everything by artificial enactments. The Referendum would not 
be likely to furnish the cure for this evil; but would tend to increase 
the number of questionable statutes that would be referred to the 
people; and some of them would doubtless be enacted. If those who are 
chosen and paid to do the work and upon whom the responsibility is 
placed, are sometimes found to enact vicious laws, what would be the 
result if legislation were enacted by all of us when we had made no 
special investigation of details, when we should be quite too prone 
to accept the declamatory recommendations of the advocates of legis¬ 
lative schemes, and submissively swallow the quack nostrums that might 
be offered for the diseases afflicting the body politic? 

The most dangerous statutes are those which deal with admitted 
evils, and, in order to repress them, are so broadly drawn as to include 
great numbers of cases which should not fairly come within their scope, 
or to create a borderland of doubt where the great mass of us may 
not know how to regulate our conduct in order that we may comply 
with their prohibitions. Just such statutes, with a basis of justice but 
with imperfectly constructed details, would be most likely to prevail 
upon a popular vote. If the forty-six states of the Union and the 
national government which is the aggregate of them all, should have 
this system of direct legislation, our statute books would very probably 


44 


High School Debating Uaiox 


soon become a medley of ill considered reforms, of aspiration sought 
to be expressed in the cold prose of statutes, of emotional enactments 
perpetuating some passing popular whim and making it a rule of con¬ 
duct for the future; and a strict enforcement of our laws would mean 
the destruction of our civilization. 

Those who advocate the direct action of our great democracy might 
study with a good deal.of profit the history of Athens. No more 
brilliant people ever existed than the Athenian people. They had a 
genius for government. The common man was able to think imperially. 
Their great philosopher, Aristotle, could well speak of the Athenians 
as a political animal. They achieved a development in literature and art 
which probably has never since been reached. They could boast of 
orators and philosophers to which those of no other nation can be com¬ 
pared. We marvel when we consider the surviving proofs of their 
civilization. But when they did away with all restraints on their direct 
action in the making and enforcement of laws, in administering justice 
and regulating foreign affairs their greatness was soon brought to an 
end, and they became the victims of the most odious tyranny to which 
any people could be subjected, the tyranny which results from their own 
unrestrained and unbridled action. 

It is said that the history of those distant times can present no useful 
precedent for our own guidance; but in what respect is human nature 
different today? What ever new stars our telescopes may have dis¬ 
covered, whatever new inventions may have been brought to light, 
whatever advances may have been made in scientific knowledge, the 
mainsprings of human action are substantially the same today as they 
were in the time of the Greeks. We should be rash indeed to assume 
that we shall succeed where they failed and that we can disregard their 
experience with impunity. 

But we are told that the crime of our age is the inordinate love of 
wealth, and that to protect ourselves from its evil we must set aside 
our existing institutions: but is the love of wealth any new thing? The 
greatest of ancient statesmen were accused of the grossest forms of 
bribery. Thousands of years ago the love of money was declared to be 
the root of all evil. It is not the fault of an age to be satisfied Muth it¬ 
self. Poets have always been singing of a golden age, and they have 
placed it sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future, but never in 
the present. We may go back almost to the oldest of poets, Hesiod, and 
we shall find him placing the golden age far back of his own da}^ while 
his own time he pictures as one stained with plundering, with envy, 
brawling, and perjury. Horace in a lively ode sought a poets escape, 
and called upon the Roman citizens to abandon their wicked country 
and set sail for the mythical islands which Jupiter had set aside when 
he stained the golden age with brass and hardened the brazen ages into 
iron. And those islands were no more mythical than the refuge from 


The Initiative and Ivefekendum 


45 


our own crimes which the inventors of the Initiative, the Referendum, 
and the Recall have pointed out to us. 

In what respect should we have been better if, during the amazing 
physical development of the last two generations we had had direct 
democratic government? It cannot be contended that our legislators 
did not represent the people. If they had attempted by their votes to 
repress the universal sentiment for industrial expansion, they could 
not have remained in office. The people of the towns even of New 
England were found voting bonds as bonuses for the building of rail¬ 
roads, and exemptions from taxation in order to secure manufacturing 
plants. And in the growing west, the sentiment for empire and expan¬ 
sion was so strong that cities and towns were bidding against each 
other in the offer of gratuities and if it had not been for the occasional 
conservatism of legislatures and the issuing of injunctions by judges, 
who under the recall would quite likely have been thrown out of office, 
our western country would have been covered with communities which 
had made themselves bankrupt by the gratuitious issue of bonds in aid of 
factories and railroads; and we should probably not have attained any¬ 
thing approaching our present development, because of the check that 
would inevitably have come through the gross corruption of the system. 

The advocates of direct government cite the examples of Oregon and 
Switzerland, where they point to results with an eloquence nowhere else 
to be found outside of a mining prospectus. Perhaps I have already refer¬ 
red sufficiently to Oregon. One must be easily satisfied who can be con¬ 
vinced by a careful scrutiny of the results in that state even though the ex¬ 
periment has been tried among her intelligent people. Switzerland is a 
small country, scarcely equal in area to some of our American counties, 
and a large proportion even of that small area is covered by unin¬ 
habitable mountains. The population is thrifty and conservative, and 
largely devoted to the work of caring for the vast number of tourists 
who annually visit the country. The conditions as to complexity of 
industry are radically different from those existing in America. But 
while Switzerland is one of the countries best adapted, as we certainly 
are one of the least adapted, to the operation of the Initiative and 
Referendum, the results there are not such as to justify their adop¬ 
tion in any other country, if we may credit the report made to the State 
Department by our Vice-Consul at Berne, and presented to the Senate 
by Mr. LaFollette on July 13, IQOQ- Tliis report says: 

“The great questions of centralization, civil status, laws of marriage 
and divorce, bankruptcy laws, the customs tariffs, the railroad purchase, 
employers’ liability, factory laws, unity of the conflicting cantonal civil 
and criminal laws into a federal code, the military organization, the 
pure food law, etc., all of which are things of the past, were con¬ 
gressional measures. It may safely be said that the Initiative can be 
of decided and positive value only in districts small enough to enable 


46 


High School Debating Union 


the average citizen to form a conscientious opinion upon projects of 
such local significance as to be well within his practical knowledge, but, 
in addition, he must exercise his duty as he sees it at the polls. With 
a comparatively small number of signatures requisite for an initiative 
measure, its danger lies in the fact that it may easily be prostituted by 
factions, cliques, malcontents, and demagogues, to force upon the 
people projects of partisan, freak, or unnecessary legislation.” 

As to the Referendum, there is no other veto power in Switzerland.. 
While it is not so intelligently exercised as it would be by an upright 
executive, still it has occasionally proved an important check. The 
most striking results are seen in the relatively small number of voters 
who will vote upon laws; and while statutes have been passed to compel 
voting, their provision has simply increased the great number of 
blank votes. 

The most serious tendency under our present system is seen in the 
multiplication of statutes, which threatens to destroy liberty, and even 
to engulf our civilization. But much of this legislative rubbish is the 
product of those who are given to exploiting themselves as the special 
champions of the people, or is a result of the readiness of the legislator 
to respond to what he thinks is the popular demand. The member 
who is most disposed to cast a negative vote is stigmatized as a re¬ 
actionary. It is not difficult to place the most immature, visionary and 
apparently popular schemes upon the statute books of some of the 
older and, until recently, most conservative states of the Union. In one 
historic ||j|mmonwealth the principal avocation of the people soon 
promises to be politics, assuming that they shall pay due attention to 
their political duties, and the next ‘reform’ will not unnaturally be 
the passage of a law to pay the voter out of the public treasury for 
the demand made upon him in listening through each recurring summer 
to the wooing of self-constituted candidates,—and there can well be no 
other candidate; in voting upon their claims; and finally, in following 
the campaign conducted by the party, and in voting in the chief election. 
The essential remedy for checking legislation would seem to be the 
education of the people so that they will present a body of sound and 
definite opinion to which the representative may respond. This work 
must be done by the people themselves, and it can be aided greatly by 
the newspapers, if they will pander less to sensationalism, indulge less in 
defamations of the agencies of government, and seek to become the 
veracious chronicles of their times. 

We should not experiment lightly with the fundamental principles 
of our government, and trust to our good fortune to escape danger. 
It is well to be an optimist, at least so far as faith is concerned in the 
final triumph of good in the universe, but we should be careful not 
to follow too willingly those professional optimists and political Micaw- 
bers who are always sure in whatever condition of danger we put 


The Initiative and Referendum 47 

ourselves that something will turn up to our advantage. One of the 
most radical mistakes our nation ever made was contributed to in 
large measure by well-meaning people who employed eulogiums upon 
their own optimism instead of arguments, and denounced as pessimists 
those who did not cheerily agree with them. Faith that things will 
ultimately come out well, does not mean that we may recklessly take 
the next step. 

It should be remembered that civilization has sometimes moved back¬ 
wards for a time, that liberty has been submerged, and that great 
and powerful nations have been brought to naught. Instead of chang¬ 
ing our system of government because of the existence of evils which 
have existed since the beginning of time, and instead of attempting to 
seek refuge in a demagogue’s paradise, our people should be incited to 
study closely the problems of government, to set higher standards for 
their own conduct, with the result that higher standards will be follow¬ 
ed by their chosen agents; and there is no evil for which the Initiative, 
Referendum, and the Recall are proposed as a remedy that cannot 
effectively be dealt with under our republican institutions, without the 
disintegration, the demoralization, and ultimate destruction of regulated 
liberty and of individual rights likely to follow from the application 
of those reactionary policies, just as they have followed them applied 
upon a large scale in history. 


“WHY SHOULD WE CHANGE OUR FORM OF 
GOVERNMENT?” 

(An Address by Nicholas Murray Butler, before the Commercial Club of St. 

Louis, November 27, 1911.) 

Examine for a moment these suggestions in order to see what they 
really mean, to what they really lead. In the first place, please do not 
overlook the exceedingly important fact that all those who are uniting 
to urge upon us this transformation of' our form of government in¬ 
variably propose to put these instrumentalities of a direct democracy 
into operation upon the initiative of a very small fraction of the 
electorate. What a glorious time it would be for the perpetual dis¬ 
turbers of political peace! It is proposed, for instance, that 5 per cent 
or 8 per cent of the electorate shall be sufficient to initiate legislation 
and to demand a poll of the people thereon. Legislation so initiated 
can not be amended or perfected in form. It cannot be examined in 
committee, its sponsors can not be cross-questioned; it must be taken 
or left precisely as they project it into the political arena. Is there any 
community in the world where 5 per cent of the adult males can not be 
gotten to sign a petition for anything? Is there any community in the 
world where if 5 per cent of the adult males had petitioned for some- 



48 


High School Debating Union 


thing that had been denied, they could not be gotten to petition for it 
again without delay? Would not life under this system become one 
long series of elections? Should we not be chasing each other to the 
polls once a week to pass upon some new legislative proposal, and not 
always one presented by the wisest and most thoughtful citizens? 
What would be the effect of all this on the members of our legislative 
bodies. National and State? Are the best men in your community 
going to accept nomination and election to a legislative body any one 
of whose acts, however carefully formulated, may be brought up for 
review and possibly overturned on the initiative of 5 per cent of the 
voting population? We complain that we do not always get the men 
we would most like to see in the State and National legislatures. 
Should we get a better class of representatives, or worse, if we took 
away their sense of responsibility, took away their dignity and authori¬ 
ty, and set ourselves up on every side to duplicate or possibly to over¬ 
turn their every act? There is only one possible answer to that ques¬ 
tion. We should degrade our legislative bodies and reduce them to 
intellectual, moral, and political impotence. 

Of all the proposals that have been brought forward in the name of 
direct democracy the initiative is the most preposterous, and the most 
vicious. It is far more objectionable than the referendum, which is ordi¬ 
narily bracketed with it, because it is intended to project a legislative 
proposal upon the community at the instigation of a very small number 
of people, which proposal must then be passed upon without amendment; 
without any opportunity to perfect it, even in phraseology; without any 
chance to receive and act upon suggestions for its extension, its narrow¬ 
ing, or its betterment; and without opportunity for any one of the pro¬ 
cesses of discussion and revision which are offered to-day by the opera¬ 
tion of the rules of procedure which control legislative bodies and their 
committees. Under the action of the initiative, a community is called 
upon to say yes or no to a proposal framed by 5 per cent of anybody. 
I submit that this is very like having to answer the question, “Have you 
left off beating your grandmother”? If you answer “yes” you em- 
barass yourself; if you answer “no” you embarass yourself still more. 

All that can possibly be accomplished by the initiative is to strike the 
heaviest possible blow at representative institutions, and to remove the 
last inducement to bring able, reflective, and intelligent men to accept 
service in a legislative body. The initiative will result in registering 
in more or less rapid succession the consecutive emotions of a small 
proportion of the electorate; because if you will examine the records 
where the initiative has been introduced, you will see that whatever 
action has been taken has been so taken by the vote of a small minority 
of the voting population. Consideration by chosen representatives 
disappears, the perfecting of a measure through committee considera¬ 
tion and public debate is made impossible; some preconceived scheme 


The Initiative and Referendum 


49 


for which there is a sentiment among a small portion of the com¬ 
munity must be accepted or rejected in toto. 

This is not a policy which makes for stable and consistent govern¬ 
ment. This is not a progressive policy. This is not a policy which will 
develop and strengthen the institutions that we have inherited and that 
we are seeking to apply to new conditions. This is not a policy which 
will bring support to the fundamental guarantees of civil and political 
liberty upon which our National Government rests. 

But it may be urged, surely those fundamental guarantees are not 
questioned or doubted. I beg to assure you that every single one of 
them is questioned and doubted in this country, and questioned and 
doubted by no inconsiderable body of opinion, some of it not lacking 
in intelligence, very energetically represented in different parts of the 
United States. We may close our eyes to all of this if we like. We 
may with our consummate American hopefulness and optimism say 
that it will turn out all right; perhaps it will; but the fact remains 
that there are some of us who believe that the fundamental guarantees 
which underlie our whole National Government and our national life 
can not be attacked, can not be denied, can not be made light of, with¬ 
out serious danger to our entire political fabric. 

Should not the majority rule? If the majority wish to sweep away 
all the fundamental guarantees, should they not be permitted to do so? 
Is that not one of the risks that democratic government must run? 
Those who believe that we learn nothing in this world from human 
experience, may if they choose, answer those questions in the affirmative. 
Those who believe that nothing in the world is fixed or definite or a 
matter of principle, may answer those questions in the affirmative; 
but those who believe that we do move forward through the centuries 
by building upon and using the experience of those who have gone 
before; those who believe that out of the thousand or two thousand 
years of political life and activity of the western world there have come 
some principles which are certain and which abide, and some political 
guarantees that are vital to human welfare, they will answer those 
questions, no; a thousand times no! Those who believe that we must 
build our institutions upon ■ foundations that are not subject to con¬ 
tinual revision and reconstruction will answer, no; a thousand times 
no! We point to the fundamental guarantees of the British and Ameri¬ 
can Constitutions, and say that those are beyond the legitimate reach 
of any majority because they are established in the fundamental laws 
of human nature upon which all government and civilization and prog¬ 
ress rest. Sweep them away, if you will; a majority may have the 
power, but with the power does not go the right. If they are swept 
away, all government and all liberty go with them, and anarchy, in 
which might alone makes right, and power alone gives place, will rise 
upon their ruins. 

4 


50 


High School Debating Union 


There is nothing new about all this. Aristotle pointed out that dem¬ 
ocracy has many points of resemblance with tyranny. It was he who 
first told us how a democracy as well as a tyranny may become a 
despotism. It was he who first pointed out to us the likeness that there 
is between the demagogue in a democracy and the court favorite in a 
tyranny. If democracy is not to become a tyranny, it must recognize 
and build upon those constitutional limitations and guarantees that are 
so precious to the individual citizen and that protect him in his life, his 
liberty, and his property. It is not in the power of any majority to 
sweep these away without sweeping away with them the whole fabric of 
the state in violent and destructive revolution. The other day, in turn¬ 
ing over the pages of John C. Calhoun, I came upon a most extraordi¬ 
nary sentence which bears upon this very point. Almost a century ago 
Calhoun wrote these words: 

“The government of the uncontrolled numerical majority is but the 
absolute and despotic form of popular government, just as the uncon¬ 
trolled will of one man is monarchy.” 

Control there must always be if there is to be liberty. That control 
is law, built in turn upon those limitations and guarantees which are 
our Constitution. It is just as easy for a majority to become a despot 
as for a monarch to become a tyrant; even a tyrant may be benevolent; 
even a democratic despotism may be malevolent. 

We are not invited to treat these constitutional limitations and guaran¬ 
tees just as we treat mere statutory legislation. They are to be revised, 
to be amended, to be overturned, in order that the sacred will of a tem¬ 
porary majority may be everywhere and always enacted into constitu¬ 
tional law. To walk in these paths means the suppression of the indivi¬ 
dual as the unit in the scheme of liberty. It means the extinction of 
liberty as we have shown it. It means what I call a socialistic democracy 
because it means that the majority will take direct and responsible con¬ 
trol of your life, your liberty, and your property. All that constitutes 
individuality will have gone by the board; it will have been poured 
into the great boiling pot of the social whole, there to be reduced to a 
single incoherent mass to be exploited, as the will of this or that 
majority may from moment to moment determine and advise. This 
may be progress, but it is certainly revolution. 

Then there is another device urged upon us in the name of progress, 
known as the referendum. This differs widely from the initiative, and has 
no possible relationship to it. It is in effect a popular veto on the acts 
of the legislature. Our American institutions provide almost without 
exception for an executive veto. The executive veto exists for the pur¬ 
pose not necessarily of permanently defeating legislation, but to compel 
its reconsideration, its public discussion, and its restudy by the people 
themselves, by the press, and by the people’s representatives. It is a 
wise and appropriate institution. Experience has shown that while 


The Initiative and Referendum 


51 


it is not often used, it may serve, and does serve, as a check upon hasty 
and ill-considered legislative action. 

The referendum, however, is quite different from the executive veto, 
and, in the form in which it is now urged, is like the initiative in that 
it tends to destroy the responsibility of the legislator and to make the 
legislature itself a very subordinate and timid body. If any community 
or State insists upon subjecting the ordinary work of its legislature to 
a general referendum it insists at the same time that it shall be served 
in its legislature by second-rate and third-rate men, and that its repre¬ 
sentatives be turned into delegates. Edmund Burke would find no 
place in such a scheme of politics as that. Once more, I say, to intro¬ 
duce the referendum, as a check upon the legislature may be progress, 
but I insist that if it is progress it is also revolution. It is revolution 
because it strips away more and more elements of strength, indepen¬ 
dence, and power from the legislature. The legislature exists in order 
that different views may be studied and compared, in order that acts 
may be considered and perfected by hearing all parties and all interests, 
in order that amendment and discussion may be possible. All this is 
stripped away if there is behind each legislator’s chair a controlling 
force which says, “If you do so and so we shall upset it by a general 
vote, as we, your creators, have a right to do.” 

Lord Acton in one of his essays, I think it is the one on the history 
of liberty, pointed out some years ago that the referendum, whatever 
may be said in its favor theoretically, is obnoxious to all believers in 
representative institutions, because it contemplates decision without dis¬ 
cussion. Of course, there is discussion in one sense, but there is no 
discussion which could in any way operate to perfect a pending proposal; 
there is no discussion possible that can lead to the amendment or im¬ 
provement of a proposal. The only discussion that can possibly take 
place is that which will confirm men in their attitude toward the prop¬ 
osition which is pending. 

Of course we are in this country, accustomed to a certain limited 
use of the principle of referendum. State institutions, as a rule, State 
amendments, almost uniformly, are passed upon by the people as a whole. 
The same is true often in the case of large financial undertakings or 
bond issues. If the legislature itself takes and may take the initiative 
in submitting a question to a referendum vote, the damage is in so far 
• limited. To force a referendum vote upon the legislature by constitu¬ 
tional provision would be, however, to inflict the maximum amount of 
damage upon the representative principle. As a matter of fact, no 
legislature should seek to shirk responsibility; that is the part of weak 
^and timid men. More than half a century ago the Court of Appeals of 
the State of New York, in the well known case of Barto v. Himrod, 
laid down the true doctrine on this subject in no uncertain terms. The 
court used this language; 


52 


High School Debating Union 


“The representatives of the people are the lawmakers, and they are 
responsible to their constituents for their conduct in this capacity. By 
following the directions of the constitution each member has an oppor¬ 
tunity of proposing amendments. The general policy of the law, as 
well as the fitness of its details, is open to discussion. The popular 
feeling is expressed through their representatives; and the latter are 
enlightened and influenced more or less by the discussions of the public 
press. 

“A complicated system can only be perfected by a body composed of 
a limited number, with power to make amendments and to enjoy the 
benefit of free discussion and consultation. This can never be accom¬ 
plished with reference to such a system when submitted to a vote of 
the people. They must take the system proposed or nothing. They can 
adopt no amendments, however obvious may be their necessity. . . . 

All the safeguards which the constitution has provided are broken 
down, and the members of the legislature are allowed to evade the 
responsibility which belongs to their office. ... If this mode of 
legislation is permitted and becomes general, it will soon bring to a 
close the whole S3^stem of representative government which has been so 
justly our pride. The legislature will become an irresponsible cabal, 
too timid to assume the responsibility of law-givers, and with just 
wisdom enough to devise subtle schemes of imposture to mislead the 
people. All the checks against improvident legislation will be swept 
away, and the character of the constitution will be radically changed.” 

Do you fully realize with what levity we are now passing upon this 
important issue of the referendum in this country? Do you realize in 
what complexity important governmental proposals are being submitted 
to thousands and tens of thousands of voters, and with what light¬ 
hearted frivolity they are being passed upon? A few weeks ago the 
great State of California, one of the most intelligent and wealthiest 
States in the Union, completely revolutionized its form of government 
by passing at one and the same election 23 amendments to its consti¬ 
tution by enormous majorities. It has, however, escaped attention 
that the total vote cast for and against these revolutionary proposals 
was about 60 per cent of the vote cast for President in 1908, or that 
cast for governor in 1910. Apparently the number of people in Cali¬ 
fornia who are interested in their form of government are only about 
six-tenths of the number that were interested in who should be Presi¬ 
dent of the United States or who should be governor of the State. Of 
the 23 amendments that were presented to the people of California on 
one and the same ballot, some half dozen were genuine constitutional 
amendments; the rest were almost without exception matters of legis¬ 
lation, some of them very trifling. 

If you have not already seen it, I want to show you the document 
that was sent by the secretary of the state of California to every regis- 


The Initiative and Referendum 


53 


tered voter in the State. (Here the speaker exhibited a large sheet 
closely printed on both sides). You will observe that the State officials 
who got up this amazing document did not expect it to be read by 
anybody. It is solidly printed in small type on both sides of one sheet, 
and there is the trifling little matter of a supplement with three or four 
amendments on a separate sheet. Here are printed the questions that 
were submitted not to the Court of Appeals of California, not to the 
professors of political science in the State university, not even to the 
legislature of the State, but to the voters! I submit that the whole 
proceeding is ridiculous. Look at these pieces of paper. In 1908, 
386,000 voted for President in California; in 1910, 385,000 voted for 
governor. The highest vote cast on October 10 last for any of these 
amendments was cast in regard to the amendment relating to women’s 
suffrage. The total vote on that amendment was 246,000; 140,000 fewer 
than were polled three years before for President, and 139,000 fewer 
than were polled two years ago for the governor. Women’s suffrage 
was carried in California by an affirmative vote of 125,000 or 2,000 less 
than Mr. Bryan received in 1908, when he lost the State by nearly 
90,000 majority. 

Is it not obvious then, that we are changing our form of government 
in the United States by a minority vote? Here is an amendment which 
doubles the number of voters in the state by removing the limitation 
of sex; here is action which establishes the initiative, the referendum, 
the recall, including the recall of judges; and every one of them is 
an amendment to the constitution of a great, rich, and populous state, 
made by a small minority of the voting population. That, I submit, is 
a political factor and a political portent of far reaching significance. 
I know the answer. It is said that the remainder of the voting popula¬ 
tion might have voted had it wished to do so. True; but why then should 
not this great non-voting mass be counted in opposition to revolution¬ 
ary changes in government rather than in favor of them, or ignored 
entirely? What principle of political science or of equity is it that 
puts the institutions of 'a whole State at the mercy, not even of a tem¬ 
porary majority, but of a small minority of the people? 


“THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS MAKERS” 

(An Address by Henry Cabot Lodge, before the Literary and Historical Society 
of North Carolina, Raleigh, N. C., November 28, 1911.) 

The voluntary referendum has always existed in this country. In 
the National Government, owing to our dual or Federal form, the ref¬ 
erendum on constitutional amendments is necessarily made to the states 
and it has never been suggested for the laws of the United States, 
owing to both physical and constitutional difficulties. In the States the 
referendum has always been freely used, not only for constitutions and 



54 


High School Debating Union 


constitutional amendments, but for laws, especially for city charters, 
local franchises, and the like. But if, on the demand of a minority of 
the voters, the referendum is made compulsory all responsibility van¬ 
ishes from the representative body. The representative no longer seeks 
to represent the whole people or even his own constituency, but simply 
votes to refer everything to the voters, and excuses himself completely, 
pointing to the compulsory referendum. On the other hand, the voters are 
called upon to legislate. Of the mass of measures submitted they 
know and can know nothing. Experience shows that in all referen- 
dums a large proportion of the voters decline to vote. Whether this 
is due to indifference or lack of information the result is the same. It 
proves that this system demands from the voters what the most intel¬ 
ligent voters in the world are unable to give. They are required to 
pass upon laws, many of which they have neither time nor opportunity 
to understand, without deliberation and without any discussion except 
what they can gather from the campaign orator, who is, as a rule, 
interested in other matters, or from an occasional article in a newspaper. 
They can not alter or amend. They must vote categorically “yes” or 
“no”. The majority either fails to vote, and the small and interested 
minority carries its measure, or the majority, in disgust, votes down all 
measures submitted, good and bad alike, because they do not under¬ 
stand them and will not vote without knowing what their votes mean. 

The great laws which, both in England and the United States, have 
been the landmarks of freedom and made ordered liberty possible 
were not passed and never could have been perfected and passed in such 
a way -as this. This new plan is spoken of by its advocates as progres¬ 
sive. As a matter of fact, it is the reverse of progressive, it is reaction¬ 
ary. Direct legislation by popular vote was familiar, painfully familiar, 
to Greece and Rome. In both it led through corruption, violence, and 
disorder to autocracy and despotism. The direct-vote system also 
proved itself utterly incapable of the government of an extended empire 
and of large populations. Where government by direct vote miserably 
failed, representative government, after all deductions have been made, 
has brilliantly succeeded. The development of the principle and prac¬ 
tice of representative government was, as I have already pointed out, 
the one great contribution of modern times to the science of govern¬ 
ment. It has shown itself capable of preserving popular rights without 
the violence and corruption which resulted of old in anarchy and des¬ 
potism; and at the same time it has proved its adaptability to the 
management of large populations and the efficient government of great 
empires. Representative government was an enormous advance over 
government by the direct vote of the forum, the agora, or the market¬ 
place, which had preceded it, and which had gone down in disaster. 
It is now proposed to abandon that great advance and to return to the 
ancient system with its dark record of disorder and failure. This is 


The Initiative and Referendum 


55 


not progress. It is retreat and retrogression. It is the abandonment of 
a great advance and a return to that which is not only old and out¬ 
worn, but which history and experience have alike discredited. 

The Congress of the United States embodies the representative prin¬ 
ciple. The principle of representation, I repeat, has been the great 
contribution of the English-speaking race to the science and practice 
of government. The Greeks and the Romans, let me say once more, 
place pure democracy and legislation by direct vote in history, at least, 
we have but to read Plato’s Republic and The Laws to learn the defects 
of the System used in Athens. Greece failed to establish an empire; 
she touched the highest peaks of civilization, and finally went to pieces 
politically beneath the onset of Rome. Rome established a great em¬ 
pire, but, after years of bloody struggles between aristocracy and dem¬ 
ocracy it ended in a simple despotism. The free cities of Italy oscillated 
between anarchy and tyranny, only to fall victims in the end to foreign 
masters. In Florence they had elections every three months and a com¬ 
plication of committees and councils to interpret the popular will. Yet 
the result was the Medicis and the Hapsburgs. 


SPECIAL MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT 

(By William Howard Taft, Votoincr the Resolution granting Statehood 

to Arizona.) 

A government is for the benefit of all the people. We believe that 
this benefit is best accomplished by popular government, because in the 
long run each class of individuals is apt to secure better provision for 
themselves through their own voice than through the altruistic inter¬ 
est of others, however intelligent or philanthropic. The wisdom of 
ages has taught that no government can exist except in accordance 
with laws and unless the people under it either obey the laws volun¬ 
tarily or are made to obey them. In a popular government the laws 
are made by the people—not by all the people—but by those who are 
supposed and declared to be competent for the purpose, as males over 
21 years of age, and not by all of these—but by a majority of them only. 
Now as the government is for all the people, and is not solely for a 
majority of them, the majority in exercising the control either directly 
or through its agents is bound to exercise the power for the benefit of 
the minority as well as the majority. But all have recognized that the 
majority of a people unrestrained by law, when aroused and without 
the sobering effect of deliberation and discussion, may do injustice 
to the minority or to the individual when the selfish interest of the ma¬ 
jority prompts. Hence arises the necessity for a constitution by which 
the will of the majority shall be permitted to guide the course of the 
government only under controlling checks that experience has shown 
to be necessary to secure for the minority its share of the benefit to 



56 


IIiGir School Debating Union 


the whole people that a popular government is established to bestow. 
A popular government is not a government of the majority, by a ma¬ 
jority, for a majority of the people. It is a government of the whole 
people, by a majority of the whole people under such rules and checks 
as will secure a wise, just and beneficent government for all the people. 
It is said you can always trust the people to do justice. If that means 
all the people and they all agree, you can. But ordinarily they do not 
all agree, and the maxim is interpreted to mean that you can always 
trust a majority of the people. This is not invariable true; and every 
limitation imposed by the people upon the power of the majority in 
their constitutions is an admission that it is not always true. No honest 
man, however great a lover of popular government, can deny that the 
unbridled expression of the majority of a community converted hastily 
into law or action would sometimes make a government tyrannical and 
cruel. Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. 
They are self imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of 
them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority 
and of the individual in his relation to other individuals and in his 
relation to the whole people in their character as a state or government. 


“VOTING ORGANIC LAWS" 

(By R. E. Cushman, in Political Science Quarterly, .Tune 1913.) 

One of the most interesting questions raised by the referendum and 
one that is well worth while to try to answer in studying the popular 
vote on the Ohio constitution of 1912, concerns the intelligence dis¬ 
played in the acceptance or rejection of proposals. How clearly did the 
voters of Ohio understand what they were voting on? The task imposed 
on the citizen who wished to vote intelligently was no slight one. He 
must read the text of each amendment and some explanation or dis¬ 
cussion of it. If he delayed his investigation until he reached the polls, 
he was confronted with thirty-six inches of fundamental political and 
economic problems. Could he vote upon them with coolness and wis¬ 
dom then? 

Perhaps the most striking instance of unintelligent action is to be 
found in the vote on the schedule of amendments, which, strangely 
enough, was submitted as a separate proposition. It is inconceivable 
that any sane man who voted for even one amendment should desire 
the defeat of the schedule which was necessary to put that one amend¬ 
ment into effect. The voters of twenty-six counties, however, after 
having approved anywhere from one to twenty-five amendments, com¬ 
placently rejected the schedule; and there was not a county in which 
the opposition to the schedule was not greater than the opposition to 
some of the other amendments. Obviously, to the minds of thousands 



The Initiative and Refeeendum 


57 


of voters, the word “schedule” conveyed no idea, and they were taking 
no chances. 


“THE DIRECT RUEE OF THE PEOPLE” 

(By George Kennan in the North American Revieic, August, 1913.. 

The evils of direct popular rule in Oregon, where it has been on trial 
for ten years, are summed up by one of its friends as follows: 

1. . The cost of direct legislation has been high in proportion to the 
results achieved. 

2. The Oregon constitution has been seriously weakened, its safe¬ 
guards entirely destroyed, and its very existence threatened, by a min¬ 
ority of the voters of the state. 

3. The people have passed laws against their interests and their con¬ 
victions. They have been fooled by men who claimed to trust the 
people, but who, afraid to submit measures honestly, so disguised them 
that they succeeded in passing. 

4. The machinery of direct legislation has fallen into the hands of 
dishonest men, who for money and spite have abused the privilege of 
direct legislation, and who, in the name of the people, have misrepre¬ 
sented our citizenship and brought disgrace upon the state. 



Bibliography of the Initiative and 
Referendum 


Below is given a list of publications which contain valuable material 
on the query under consideration. The books and magazines can be 
secured from their publishers, and the Senate and House Documents and 
Congressional Records can be secured through the North Carolina 
Senators and Representatives in Congress, or direct from the Superin¬ 
tendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. If obtained from the Su¬ 
perintendent of Documents they have to be paid for with coin or money 
order (not stamps) at from five to ten cents each. It may be possible 
in some instances to secure them free of charge from the Senators and 
Representatives. Further information and material can be secured 
through the National Popular Government League, 913 Munsey Build¬ 
ing, Washington, D. C. It would be well for every school to get in 
communication with this League. 

It is recommended that the four following publications be purchased 
as they furnish exceedingly valuable material. They are numbered in 
the order of their importance. 

1. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 
Volume 43, September, 1912. This whole number, consisting of 352 
pages, is devoted to an excellent consideration of the Initiative, Refer¬ 
endum, and Recall. Published in Philadelphia by the American Acade¬ 
my of Political and Social Science, 36th and Woodland Avenue. Price 
$1.00. 

2. W. B. Munro—“The Initiative, Referendum, and Recall.” 365 
pages. Published by D. Appleton & Company, New York, N. Y., 1912. 
Price $1.50. 

3. Debater’s Handbook Series—“The Initiative and Referendum.” 
Published by the H. W. Wilson Company, Minneapolis, Minn. Price 
$1.00. 

4. E. P. Oberholtzer—“The Referendum in America, with Chapters 
on the Initiative and Recall.” 533 pages. Published by Charles Scrib¬ 
ner’s Sons, New York, N. Y., 1911. Price $2.25. 

In the preparation of the debate such dictionaries, encyclopedias, 
almanacs, reference books—the American Commonwealth, by James 
Bryce, for example—and files of magazines as are to be found in the 
local school or city library should be carefully consulted. 

Other publications in addition to those given already are indicated 
in the following list which is intended to be suggestive rather than 
complete. 



The Initiative and Iveferendum 


59 


GENERAL REFERENCES 

Political Science Quarterly, Volume 28, pages 18 to 33, March, 1913. 
“People’s Rule on Trial.” An analysis of the results of the Oregon 
election, November 5th, 1912. 

Political Science Quarterly, Wlume 28, pages 107 to 229, June, 1913. 
“Voting Organic Laws: The Action of the Ohio Electorate in the Re¬ 
vision of the State Constitution in 1912.” 

These papers summarize in a specific way the latest important elec¬ 
tions in which the principles of the Initiative and Referendum were 
involved. They may be secured from the Political Science Quarterly, 
published by Ginn and Company, Lancaster, Pa., for 75 cents each. 
They will prove very helpful in the preparation of the debates. 

AFFIRMATIVE REFERENCES 
Senate and House Documents and Congressional Records 

Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Jr.—Article on “Initiative, Referendum, and 
Recall,” Senate Document No. 302, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Hon, Jonathan Bourne, Jr.—Speech on “Popular Versus Dele¬ 
gated Government,” Senate Document, No. 524, 2nd Session, 6ist Con¬ 
gress. 

Hon. C. F. Taylor—“Error in Reasoning Relative to the Initiative, 
Referendum, and Recall.” Senate Document No. 651, 2nd Session, 62nd 
Congress. 

Hon. H. S. Bigelow—“Initiative and Referendum.” Senate Document 
No. 556, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Hon. Judson King—“New Dangers to Majority Rule.” Senate Docu¬ 
ment No. 897, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Senator R. M. LaFollette—“The Initiative in Switzerland.” Senate 
Document no. 126, ist Session, 6ist Congress. 

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt—“The Right of the People to Rule.” 
Senate Document No. 473, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt—“A Charter of Democracy.” Senate Do¬ 
cument no. 348, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Senator R. L. Owen—“Representative Government.” Senate Docu¬ 
ment No. 624, 2nd Session, 6ist Congress. 

Senator R. L. Owen—“People’s Rule Versus Boss Rule.” Congres¬ 
sional Record for March 3, 1913. 

Magazines 

Arena, Volume 33 , pages 369-/7, April 1905. “Switzerland and Her 
Ideal Government” O. K. Hewes. May 1905, pages 482-86. “Practical 
Results of the Referendum in Switzerland.” Chas Borgeaud. 


GO 


High School Debating Union 


Arena, Volume 34, August 1905, pages 142-46. “A Vast Educational 
vScheme,” Eltweed Pomeroy. 

Arena, Volume 35, February 1906, pages 146-50. “Democracy’s 
Call to the Statesmanship of Today,” Edwin Markham. May 1906, 
pages 507-11. “A Primer of Direct Eegislation.” 

Arena, Volume 37, June 1907, pages 627-30. “Some Facts about 
Direct-Legislation through the Initiative and Referendum.” 

Arena, Volume 38, September 1907, pages 288-95. “A Calm Review 
of Objections Urged by the Opposition,” Linton Satterthwait. Novem¬ 
ber 1907, pages 515-19. “Secretary Taft and Senator Lodge as Up¬ 
holders of Machine Rule,” George H. Shibley. 

Arena, Volume 39, February 1908, pages 131-41. “The Direct-Vote 
System,” W. D. Mackenzie. 

Arena, Volume 39, June 1908, pages 643-50. “Restoration of Popular 
Rule,” R. L. Owen. June 1908, pages 650-61. “The Direct-Legislation 
Campaign in the Empire State,” B. O. Flower. 

Arena, Volume 40, September 1908, pages 142-50. “Initiative and Re¬ 
ferendum in Practical Operation in Oregon,” G. H. Shible}^ 

Arena, Volume 41, July 1909, pages 461-67. “The People’s Rule in 
Oregon,” C. H. McColloch. 

American Political Science Review, Volume 6, August 1912, pages 
345-66. “The Initiative and the Referendum in Switzerland,” W. E. 
Rappard. 

Atlantic Monthly, Volume 109, January, 1912, pages 122-31. “Initia¬ 
tive, Referendum and Recall,” Jonathan Bourne, Jr. This is an excel¬ 
lent article, designed primarily as an answer to an article by Hon. 
Samuel W. McCall, published in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1911, 
and reprinted in this Bulletin. Atlantic Monthly Co., 4 Park St., Bos¬ 
ton, Mass. 35 cents a copy. 

NEGATIVE REFERENCES 

Senate and House Documents and Congressional Records 

Senator H. C. Lodge—“The Constitution and Its Makers.” Senate 
Document No. 271, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Senator Elihu Root—“Judicial Decisions and Public Feeling.” Senate 
Oocument No. 271, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

President Nicholas Murray Butler—“Why Should We Change Our 
Form of Government?” Senate Document No. 238, 2nd Session, 62nd 
Congress. 

Hon. Samuel W. McCall—“Representative as Against Direct Govern¬ 
ment.” Senate Document No. 273, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Gov. Emmett O’Neal—“Representative Government and the Common 
Law.” Senate Document No. 240, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 


The Initiative and IIeeerendum 


61 


President W. H. Taft—Address. Senate Document No. 451, 2nd 
Session, 62nd Congress. 

President W. H. Taft—“The Judiciary and Progress.” Senate Doc¬ 
ument No. 408, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Senator H. C. Lodge—“The Compulsory Initiative and Referendum.” 
Senate Document No. 406, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Judge N. C. Young—“Shall We Change Our Plan of Government?” 
Senate Document No. 865, 2nd Session, 62nd Congress. 

Hon. J. B. Foraker—Address. Senate Document No. 445, 2nd Ses¬ 
sion, 62nd Congress. 

Hon. G. W. Wickersham—Address. Senate Document No. 62, ist 
Session, 63rd Congress. 

Hon. G. W. Wickersham—Address. Senate Document No. 20, ist 
Session 63rd Congress. 

Senator J. W. Bailey—Address against Initiative, Referendum, and 
Recall. Congressional Record, January 2nd, 1913. 

Magazines 

American Journal of Sociology, Volume 10, May 1905, pages 713-49. 
“Popular Initiative as a method of Legislation and Political Control.” 
W. H. Brown. 

Edinburgh Review, Volume 211, January 1910, pages 131-54. “The 
Referendum.” 

Contemporary Review, Volume 67, March 1895, pages 328-44. “The 
Referendum in Switzerland.” N. Droz. 

North American Review, Volume 185, May 1907, pages 203-13. “The 
Referendum and Initiative in Switzerland.” M. W. Hazeltine. 

North American Reviezv, Volume 190, August 1909, pages 222-30. 





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Extension Series Bulletins 


1. A Professional Library for Teachers in Secondary Schools. 

2. Addresses on Education for Use in Declaiming, Essay Writing, 

and Reading. 

3. Extension Lectures for North Carolina Communities. 

4. Correspondence Courses. 

5. The Initiative and Referendum. 


Copies of these Bulletins will be sent you or your friends if you 
will address the 


BUREAU OF EXTENSION, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 






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